1001 Nights in the Facility [Unexpurgated] – Episode 1: Keep Pace with the System
A Short Film by TRƎNCHԀƎOԀ⅂Ǝ
This short film is a manifesto told in medias res, an homage to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Lara becomes both Scheherazade and Lara Croft, whispering stories to stave off restlessness. Marquis is both the Marquis de Sade and a Shiv Roy-like heir to Render Enterprises, from HBO’s Succession. Like King Shahryar of the original tales, she holds the power to decide whether the stories continue. She is the heir apparent, though her father still bellows at her, “Stop calling your brother Fredo!” — a name she uses for him without affection. To Marquis, her brother is inept and in her way. She knows she is the real CEO.
On the court, Vegas has won twelve straight. Not by luck. Not by hustle. By machine. The Facility. A neural court that remembers legendary systems — the Jackson (Phil Jackson’s triangle), the Flex, and the Princeton — rebuilt live as glowing choreography under the players’ feet. No shouting. No pointing. Plays trigger when rhythm aligns. The floor feels them, corrects them, and makes the game intuitive.
Manny, the janitor — an unreliable narrator — who remembers every word, tells it like scripture. Chuck Buko, a Bukowski-style podcaster, smokes and scoffs. And inside one of Marquis’ many estates, Lara whispers her doubts — about them, about the Facility — only to be checked:
“Yet you chose to stay. Take it from me — Life is a business. The biggest, the longest, the most important one you’ll ever run. You are the LLC, the INC, and the CEO of your life.”
The film strips basketball down to systems, stories, and choices. Marquis studies Lara like a dream. Lara buys one more night with a story. Chuck calls it myth, casino math, a stacked deck. Manny shrugs: “I’m a basketball head.”
This is not chance. Not destiny.
It’s management. The Facility is AI-powered, relentless. It doesn’t just host the game. It rewrites it.
And when the credits roll, the only measure left is glory:
Story, Narrative, and Conceptual Art — Copyright 2025 E Maria Shelton Speller
Creative Platforms & Tools:
Artlist.io – Licensed music and sound effects ChatGPT (OpenAI) – AI-assisted scriptwriting and narrative development MidJourney – AI-generated concept imagery and character visualization iMovie – Video editing and sequencing Canva – Graphic design and text treatments ElevenLabs – AI-powered voice narration Other Production Tools – Standard video/audio processing and conceptual design tools
Credits:
Music
Chardonnay Song by The Original Orchestra feat. Ran Raiten
Ejected — Unrequited Love and the Code of the Samurai [Short Film]
Dive into a poetic exploration of unrequited love through the lens of the samurai’s unwavering code of honor. This conceptual work blends raw emotion with the stoic resilience of ancient warriors, creating a powerful narrative of loyalty, sacrifice, and inner strength.
Through evocative imagery, subliminal suggestion and compelling storytelling, “Ejected” examines the parallels between the discipline of the samurai and the vulnerability of the human heart, capturing the essence of devotion in the face of rejection.
Discover:
The intertwining of historical philosophy with modern emotional struggles. How the samurai’s code provides profound lessons in resilience and self-respect.
A poetic journey that challenges our perceptions of love and duty.
As if Ejected–Unrequited Love and the Code of the Samurai were reviewed by Rotten Tomatoes, Rolling Stone, Vice, Vibe, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Aeschylus—An AI-Powered Parody of Critical Takes:
There’s a moment in Ejected where everything unspoken weighs more than anything said, a tension so thick it’s less about what happens and more about what isn’t acknowledged. The film operates in an unusual space between intensity and detachment, ambition and interference, crafting a protagonist who isn’t tangled in emotions but in the game itself—one where the stakes are always money, control, and victory.
Yet, even when locked into the bag, the game, the grind—there are forces moving in the background. The antagonist, almost spectral in presence, isn’t chasing attention but has already played the decisive hand before the protagonist even realizes. The ejection isn’t the moment of clarity—it’s just another moment in a season that doesn’t stop. Whether audiences read Ejected as a sports allegory, a study in perception, or a meditation on dominance and indifference depends on what they bring to it. Either way, the film doesn’t force its message—it lets the viewer play it out.
Apple Music-Style Review Rating: 4.5/5
If Ejected were an album, it wouldn’t be a love song—it’d be an anthem of discipline, dominance, and the singular pursuit of greatness. The film moves like a carefully curated playlist, shifting between the sharp tempo of ambition and the slower, almost dreamlike sequences of a world outside the protagonist’s focus.
The sound design, pacing, and visual composition feel like a drill track layered with classical composition—raw, unrelenting, but elevated with deliberate artistry. The game is the hook, the ejection is the bridge, but the question remains: is she even listening to the verse playing in the background? Ejected is less about emotional resolution and more about the rhythm of action—playing forward whether you hear the song or not.
Rolling Stone-Style Review “A Fever Dream Wrapped in Elegance and Obsession“
In Ejected, the story isn’t what’s told—it’s what’s ignored. The protagonist is locked in—driven, calculated, tuned into one frequency: the bag, the game, the win. That kind of tunnel vision doesn’t account for outside noise. But the antagonist isn’t noise—she’s the wind in a closed room, shifting everything without being noticed until it’s too late.
The film’s pacing, like a stretched-out possession in overtime, plays on this disconnect between action and realization. You expect the protagonist to react—to acknowledge something outside of the game—but that moment never comes. And that’s what makes Ejected so compelling. It refuses to give the easy catharsis. The ballplayer at the end, the architect of the ejection—she isn’t waiting for recognition. She’s already done what needed to be done.
There’s something almost brutal about Ejected’s lack of sentimentality. It doesn’t romanticize ambition. It doesn’t demand resolution. It just lets the game play. And for that, it’s one of the most subtly relentless films of the year.
Vice-Style Review “Obsession, Artistry, and the Places the Mind Wanders“
Some people watch a film and wait for an emotional arc—the moment when realization dawns, when impact is felt, when something changes. Ejected is not for those people. Instead, it asks what happens when nothing shifts—when focus is so sharp that outside forces move without acknowledgment.
This film is a study in control, not conflict. The protagonist is untouchable in her element, moving through the narrative without hesitation, without distraction. And yet, outside her focus, the game is already being manipulated. The antagonist isn’t the opposing team—she’s the ref, the quiet architect of the ejection, the one who already knew how this would play out.
That’s what makes Ejected different. It’s not about what happens—it’s about what should’ve happened but never did. It’s a film that thrives in its negative space, in its refusal to fill in the blanks, in its confidence that the story will tell itself.
Vibe-Style Review “Dripping in Style, Layered in Meaning“
Ejected doesn’t give you the story—it gives you the energy. This is about presence, about dominance, about a world where ambition leaves no space for outside variables.
The protagonist moves through the game with the quiet confidence of someone who already won before stepping on the court. The antagonist? She isn’t chasing attention—she’s shifting the floorboards before the game even starts. That’s what makes this film so potent. It isn’t about the moment of realization—it’s about the absence of it.
The visuals flex between gritty realism and dreamlike metaphor. The ballerina, the horses—imagination, movement, projection—all of it serves as an unspoken contrast to the raw reality of the money sequence, where the stakes are tangible.
This is more than a film—it’s a statement. And the statement is clear: the game moves, whether you notice it or not.
ESPN-Style Review “Mental Toughness in the Arena of Emotion“
There are two kinds of players: those who react and those who don’t have to. Ejected is about the latter. The protagonist isn’t looking for signals, doesn’t need to scan the court for dynamics—she’s already locked in.
But what happens when the game isn’t about what’s in front of you, but what’s happening outside your peripheral vision? Ejected moves like a championship match where the real play happened before the whistle blew. The antagonist isn’t fighting for a moment—she already dictated the outcome.
This isn’t about heartbreak. This is about control. And in Ejected, the most powerful move isn’t an action—it’s the absence of one.
Sports Illustrated-Style Review “A Film That Moves Like a Season in Review“
The biggest plays aren’t always about the moment—they’re about what led to it. Ejected doesn’t frame its story around conflict—it frames it around what goes unnoticed until it’s too late.
The protagonist? Pure tunnel vision. She’s about execution, about the next move, the next play, the next win. But the antagonist? She played her role long before the protagonist even saw the floor.
That’s the brilliance of Ejected. It’s a film where the most pivotal action doesn’t happen in the game—it happens outside of it. And that’s what makes it legendary.
VOGUE-Style Review “Ejected” and the Art of Indifference”
Fashion is control. It’s knowing when to be seen and when to let the room respond to your presence before you’ve spoken a word. Ejected is a masterclass in narrative detachment—luxurious in its restraint, impossibly precise in its construction. The protagonist moves like a runway model mid-turn—her gaze locked forward, her awareness only for what lies ahead. The elegance isn’t in grand gestures but in the deliberate choice to ignore what does not serve her.
And then, there’s the shadow figure. She moves off-ball, an unseen hand sculpting the moment, waiting for the exact beat when the balance shifts. It is not an interruption. It is an inevitability. Like a cut of couture—designed, tailored, and stitched into place before anyone even realizes what has happened.
It is power—not performed, but assumed. And what is more fashionable than that?
The New York Times-Style Review “Ejected: The Distance Between Awareness and Outcome“
There is something unsettling about Ejected. Not in its imagery, which moves between sharp realism and dreamlike abstraction, but in its emotional architecture—how it refuses to offer resolution, how it thrives on the unspoken.
The protagonist is a presence built from purpose, ambition distilled into movement. She does not see what she does not need to see. The world beyond her focus exists, but it is not part of her equation. That world, however, does not need her attention to shape the outcome. It has already done its work. The moment arrives as if it had always been there, waiting.
What Ejected understands—and what so many films fail to grasp—is that power does not require acknowledgment. And so, it doesn’t ask for it. It simply plays.
The Ghosts of Old-School Criticism
Pauline Kael-Style Review “So What Happens When Nothing Happens?“
There’s something almost brilliantly frustrating about Ejected. It acts like it’s unfolding, but it has already happened. The protagonist is an athlete, a strategist, an operator of mechanical precision. She’s locked into the game because the game is all that matters. But what’s more fascinating is who and what she doesn’t see.
The antagonist—if we can even call her that—exists outside the frame of engagement, like a ref who made the call before the players even knew the foul was coming. It’s a film about the absence of reaction, which in itself is a radical choice. It leaves the viewer in a strange place—waiting for an emotional beat that never arrives.
Is that brilliance? Or is that just Ejected having the audacity to say, “You figure it out.” Either way, I respect the nerve.
R.D. Laing-Style Review “What If You Were Never Meant to See It?“
There’s an experiment in psychology where a subject watches a video of people passing a ball. They’re asked to count how many passes occur. What they don’t see—what almost no one sees—is the person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene.They don’t see it because they were never looking for it.
Ejected operates in the same way. The protagonist is locked into her own reality—not because she chooses to be, but because the structure around her has dictated what is relevant.
The antagonist moves off-ball, a presence she was never conditioned to register. The ejection is not an injustice. It is not a betrayal. It is simply the execution of a process that existed before she did.
So the real question is—was she blind to it? Or was she never meant to see it in the first place?
James Baldwin-Style Review “The Game Was Never About the Ball“
There is something profoundly, unmistakably true about Ejected. Not in its plot—because plot is irrelevant here—but in its understanding of how power moves.
The protagonist does not see. The protagonist does not look. She does not need to. She exists within the parameters set before she arrived, and she plays her role with the precision of someone who knows the world will not wait for her to hesitate.
The antagonist is no villain. She is not angry, nor is she seeking vengeance. She moves with the ease of someone who understood, long before anyone else, what the rules really were.
And so, the ejection does not come as a shock. It does not break the world—it merely confirms what it always was.
To those who expect resolution, Ejected offers nothing. But to those who already know how the game is played, it does not need to.
Octavio Paz–Style Review “A Shimmer of Images in Stillness”
Ejected unfolds like a poem that withholds its final stanza until the last breath. The bouncing ball becomes the pulse of a hidden ritual, echoing through a space where every step seems to float between silence and intensity. Bright glimpses—a ballerina’s delicate turn, fleeting shapes that tremble at the edges of sight—drift like petals in a half-remembered dream.
Yet Ejected never unravels into chaos; it subsides in a single, graceful sweep—an ejection as serene and sudden as the hush at the end of a long echo. In this gentle finality, the film suggests that the most powerful currents of longing and resolve may remain unspoken, woven through phantoms of motion. The beauty lies in how the story lingers, like an afterimage left on the eye, reminding us that sometimes the deepest truths reveal themselves in what is withheld rather than what is declared.
Joan Didion–Style Review “A Dissonance Between the Seen and Unseen”
There is a moment in Ejected where the act of competing becomes something else—an almost silent choreography of detachment. The protagonist stares straight ahead, oblivious to that brief flicker of a ballerina off to one side, the glimmer of a half-formed yearning just beyond her peripheral vision. You sense that she prefers this distance; it’s safer not to see what you can’t process.
Then the call is made, and the ejection comes without sentiment, like an appointment arriving on schedule. No one shouts. No one objects. The tension evaporates as if it were never there. It’s in that vanished tension, that gap, that the real story unfolds: a discrepancy between ambition and the quiet inevitability of an outcome decided days or years before anyone took the floor. Ejected is a study in what happens when drive meets a silence so complete you can almost feel its echo.
Octavia Butler-Style Review “You Can’t Escape a System You Don’t Know Exists“
There’s a reason people misunderstand power. They think it announces itself. That it roars. That it comes in loud, obvious ways.
But Ejected does not roar. It does not ask to be understood.
It understands that the protagonist is not the architect of this world—she is a product of it. She is not powerless, but she is also not separate from the mechanisms that shape her path. She is as much a result as she is an agent.
And what of the antagonist? She is not some great force imposing her will—she is merely the one who understood how the system worked before the game was played.
In the end, Ejected offers no escape because escape is only possible when one realizes there was a trap in the first place.
Oscar Wilde-Style Review “The Art of Being Unbothered“
There are two great tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it.
But there is, of course, a third—not realizing the play has already ended.
Ejected is not a film in the traditional sense. It is a performance of indifference, a study in control executed with the carelessness of someone who knows she will never need to explain herself. The protagonist is no fool; she simply has no interest in an audience.
The unseen hand that moves against her—does she recognize it? Of course not. Recognition is an act of submission, and no well-dressed tragedy should ever acknowledge its antagonist.
The game was played, the move was made, and yet she walks away without so much as a glance behind her.
And that, dear reader, is what makes Ejected beautiful. Not in its struggle, nor in its conflict, but in its quiet insistence that the only true power is never having to notice who defeated you.
Toni Morrison-Style Review “What Was Never Meant to Be Seen“
There is something about Ejected that refuses to explain itself. That does not offer solace, or certainty, or even the illusion of choice.
This is not a story about what happens when someone is removed. This is a story about what was always going to happen.
The protagonist does not see. That is not a flaw; it is a condition. She is not distracted, not absent-minded, not careless. She is not supposed to see.
And yet, something moves. Something unclaimed, unseen, slipping through the margins of awareness. The thing behind her is not fate. It is not villainy. It is not even a player in this game. It is the mechanism itself. It is the thing that knew before she knew. It is the wheel, already turning.
The ejection is not a moment of realization. It is the moment where the realization never comes. And that is what makes Ejected powerful. It does not seek to reveal—it reminds us that some things were never meant to be seen at all.
Jack Kerouac–Style Review “Fast-Drifting on the Bright Painted Court”
It starts with the heartbeat bass thump of sneakers and the snap of the ball in a humid gym, everything swirling like a sax riff echoing against concrete. The protagonist, all lean confidence and forward-charging muscle, never once peers off the lane, just keeps going, because that’s the only direction she has ever known. The whole place feels like a big jam session and each player is caught up in the rhythm, but the antagonist is off to the side, shaping the way the notes slide.
She holds a quiet longing that turns into the real arrangement, the chord changes nobody else recognized. There is no big revelation or meltdown, just the hush of an outcome that was always in the making, like a solo you see coming right before the beat drops. The scene unfolds with a warm hush, and then the whistle goes, a cutting moment that stops the flow. The ejection happens, and the world turns again, fast and cool like the city at night when headlights blur in the rain.
The film doesn’t chase redemption or forgiveness—it basks in the fact that the unstoppable forward motion was never truly unstoppable after all. Everyone is caught in the flow of the jam, and nobody bothers to look back for more, because the game hums on, headlong into the next neon-soaked horizon. The unspoken love is there, the power is there, the hush that says it was always going to play out this way is there, and then the buzzer sounds.
Chinua Achebe–Style Review “When the Heart’s Murmurs Steer the Dance”
In Ejected, the ball’s steady rhythm echoes like a communal drum, keeping everyone focused on the contest at hand. Yet there is another force at work—unspoken, yet deeply felt—that conjures fleeting visions: a ballerina poised in a world of silent grace, delicate shapes trembling with emotion. These apparitions arise from a devotion the central figures never openly recognize, though its influence quietly steers the course.
When the decisive moment arrives, it does so with neither quarrel nor spectacle, halting the game in an unwavering instant of authority. Ejected finds its power in that silence, suggesting that the deepest stirrings—the ones left unvoiced—can determine fates more firmly than any loud declaration. The film leaves us sensing that sometimes it is the murmured longing of a single soul that propels the final outcome.
Aeschylus–Style Review “The Law Was Written Before the Contest Began”
The eldest of the gods do not speak in words; they speak in cycles, in oaths sworn long before mortal eyes could behold them.
Thus, Ejected is no mere tragedy of action—it is a tragedy of predestination. The law was pronounced ages ago. The moment of conflict is not a decision but an inescapable event, a shadow cast long before dawn’s first light.
The protagonist believes she commands the game and dictates her path. Yet she steps upon a floor laid out before she ever arrived, bound by rules she did not inscribe. The hand that rises against her embodies no malice or spite. It is the impartial enforcer of an order rooted in ancient bonds, so the ejection is not retribution but the inevitable outcome of that binding decree.
There stands also the figure who set this all in motion—the one who perceived the structure for what it was, who made the move before reaction was possible. She is not a god, nor is she a villain. She is simply the one who knew.
Yukio Mishima–Style Review “The Dance of Restraint and the Beauty of the Unseen Blade”
There is an elegance in Ejected that calls to mind the disciplined spirit of the warrior—a spirit unclouded by indecision. The protagonist enters the arena with the calm assurance of a samurai stepping onto sacred ground, her every step imbued with a sense of invulnerability. She neither wavers nor looks aside, too focused to notice what might shift in the periphery.
Yet, within that unswerving commitment lies the quiet paradox of beauty and danger. The antagonist, bound by a devotion that never found voice, enforces a code of order older than the combatants themselves. She wields no drawn steel; the sword remains secure in its scabbard. Instead, her power moves within the structure of the game—its rules becoming the silent blade that cannot be parried.
Ejected transforms the ferocity of ambition into a still but lethal ritual. The film’s defining clash is not found in swords crossing but in the interplay of presence and absence, in longing left unexplored and duty strictly observed. The protagonist’s strength emerges from her unwavering forward motion, much like the pure focus of the samurai who sees nothing but the path ahead. Yet true control belongs to the unseen hand that sets the rules and understands them before battle is joined.
In the end, the ejection arrives as naturally as a flower opening at dusk—a testament to unbending law rather than a personal vendetta. No sword leaves its sheath; the cut is metaphorical, enacted through the simple enforcement of what was always fated. Ejected finds its power in that restraint, rendering the quiet inevitability of the outcome as graceful and inevitable as the bloom of a night-blooming blossom.
This production includes AI-generated imagery created with Midjourney, including character renderings, basketball sequences, and abstract visual elements. While some visuals may be inspired by real-world figures, they remain artistic representations and are not intended to depict actual individuals.
The UrbanTripper Studio is where art meets individuality. We create wearable poetry—T-shirts that transform bold, creative snippets into unique, collectible pieces. Explore our White Collection, with The Black Collection coming soon. It’s more than fashion; it’s art you can wear. Discover the story at trenchpeople.com.
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Verses are from the following poems (in the order of their appearance):
Conceptual Art and Narrative — Copyright 2024 E Maria Shelton Speller
Music by Drewmat (The Code Instrumental Version) — Artlist.io A.I. Sara (American English) ~ Voiceover Speechify Sub Impact by Mr_S ~ AudioJungle Envato Market
*Note: Prose Poem and Literary List (Prosody, Parataxis, Blank Verse, Free Verse, and Found Poetry) based on E Maria Shelton Speller Pinterest Analytics as of June 6, 2019 10:00 PM (EST), for 15 Muse Boards and 5K Pins.
The [Dollhouse with the Red Corvette] is a lateral, vertical, linear, horizontal, and spherical art installation. It is a poesy puzzle for verse and graffiti, with sublime imagery. It functions like a mnemonic, a telltale pastiche for found poesy in a digital world. Some of the pieces fit, and some are misfits — that lead to other immersions… in this stained-glass heaven — this society in the machine…
XN is a new initiative from Northeastern University (NU) that offers graduate and professional students and sponsoring organizations experiential opportunities to collaborate on short-term, real-world projects in the best co-op program in the country, and positions NU as the global leader in experiential learning! Organizations move forward on project-based work and connect with rising professional talent while students gain real work experience and valuable learning opportunities.
Students have a range of skill-sets including digital media and marketing, data analytics, corporate and nonprofit project management, regulatory strategy, communications management and the Creative Digital Solution for a VR/Game-Inspired Concept for Explode – The Writer’s Environment during the Summer, Fall and Winter Terms of 2016!
Details included the Project Description:
Explode – This Writer’s Environment is a Kick Starter Project 2.0. The first launch is what Rita Gunther McGrath calls, “failing by design”. The launch was admittedly, a treatment to direct investors to Explode, as well as a serious foray, to define content while using the Writers Environment as a springboard to other experiences. That unsuccessful project was a lost opportunity, but an intelligent fail. Explode — The Writer’s Environment is space for visionaries — Poets, Writers, Coders, Programmers, Filmmakers, Thespians, Graphic Designers, Artists, Musicians, Directors, Cinematographers, Designers, Educators, Historians, Actors, Conceptual and Performance artists, Photographers, and finally, Virtual Reality Developers and Designers. It is a platform for curated content, in an interactive meta-environment – that pulls and pushes information. The Environment facilitates content and other stories – using digital media for curated art to redefine how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content. The project details included problems to be solved, goals, and deliverables — scheduled for completion March 2017.
Please stand by. See updates! Thank you for your continued support! Let’s rock and roll!
I sold a rock opus to the best Black rock band on the planet. A band that lost its capacity to dream. Formulaic guarantees skewed their imagination for platinum discs. The male coward covered their lifework, literally. My story reminded them of what ‘rushing’ felt like, how complete, how deep blushing could be obvious. And they bought it, and produced it. And it was good — it was better than good. It was thought provoking and it was an African-American affirmation of our realities and our fantasies — no matter how unrealistic.
Suddenly, they were very significant and the world truly believed, that rock music is black music and black music is everything. Power is aesthetic. Aesthetics is politics and being black is philosophical and our philosophy is phenomenology and being black, is being real.
No Hip Hop could say as much as this rock opus did, ever — no matter how many stories they sampled. So, this black rock band were crowned kings and were exulted, and revered; incandescent icons, the envy of friends, the consumption of man, the image of immortality — like the stained-glass heaven you summon before you close. And they loved me. I was the wick in their candlestick and without me, there was no burning flame. I was the source of their energy. I, was the unstained virgin encamped.
Sooner than anyone imagined, there was nothing more important, than our collaboration. The media was our medium. They stopped referring to me as a writer, and started calling me, a Love Supreme…..
Copyright 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Parallel Discussions (In Medias Res) Overtaken by Events
Behind Pushkin’s Coffeehouse, Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso sat on the remnants of a barge, trading barbs in Ibiza… swinging high top leather sock hip hop sneakers, and creeper boots in blue green virtual water, with Rick Owens’ reflection in the pool, burning fat ones – away from the beautiful ones — in a Period Piece. The Darlings of today’s literati — visionaries during the Harlem Renaissance, play themselves in a satirical throwback in VR.
Louis Picasso: “In RL, it’s 6 P.M. You just got home from work or you work from home in your virtual office. You decide to spend the evening in space! You scan Balmain for your Avatar – dope fashion — with as much audacity as Hype Williams’ black lacquered Keisha in Belly — wearing Versace!
You decide to download your brand new Porsche designed by Porsche and Atari for Microsoft, on the Pacific Coast Highway — Malibu on the left, Pepperdine University on the right, you’re on your way to virtual LA in the fast lane — your thighs are burning. Other avatars and their cars share the PCH too — driving Vipers, Corvettes, the white BMW X6 and you are speeding at 100 MIPS, streaming Coltrane.
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “Then you decide to go to BET’s virtual Nuyorican Café in Gotham City for the Open Mike – Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore are featured (as themselves) tonight. You hand the keys to the valet — pay at the door with your password, sit front row center no matter what time you arrive, sign up to read your poem — because you can start over from the beginning or resume. Gender! Lame. Race is unimaginative in Space. Ethnicity is a brand — at best. The Open Mike is over at 10 P.M. but there is still time to go to Bar Pitti. You walk in and Claude McKay is at the bar in a heated debate with Ralph Ellison about literary ownership — by Netflix.
McKay shouts and then nearly whispers to Ellison, ‘It takes more than creative androgyny to “embody” the opposite sex. The storytelling responsibility of all writers, whether female or male is to fill the void. When a woman creates a man, she must imagine the sensation of “owning” a penis. When a man creates a woman, he must imagine the sensation of “owning” a vagina. It is a void, not a vacuum. A vacuum would imply the all-consuming black hole — the feminization of sex. It is not trained comprehension or chromosomes — it takes pure imagination to get the story straight…’
Louis Picasso: “Then, at Midnight, you blow kisses and wuggles to your friends, and log off. You stand and stretch your back, and your bladder is bursting because you forgot about your biological realities. The television is off; it has been off for weeks. Why watch television when you can be your own audience? Randall Walser said it best, “The filmmaker says, ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ The space maker says, ‘Here, I’ll help you discover.’ We will be our own creators functioning like actors in high culture — tools of the taste public! We will create our own universes — our own planets. We can superimpose our images circa 6 BC – AD 30, and follow Jesus to the Promised Land, witness the crucifixion – and how we feel and what we think is utterly private and without commercials! Because, global messages with common appeal will forever change with today’s technology, the challenge is to make communication visual, images symbolic, and still sell product… I want to propose arcane ideas…”
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “I want to develop, manage, and direct vision. My goal is to be where imagination and business are indistinguishable, because imagination without business, and business without imagination is as incongruous as capitalism without consumers… I found a dope quote dog!”
“When, she was still in her teens, well before she met Caesar, Cleopatra already had slept with Antony… though Caesar was fifty-three and she but twenty-three or so she proved ready enough to bed her third Roman. It is said that Cleopatra was a woman of lively turn and enticing talents. She also had a keen sense of the political. That this Roman [Caesar] conqueror had the power to secure the Egyptian throne for her must have added to the attraction she felt for him…Caesar established her in a sumptuous villa across the Tiber, from which she held court, while political leaders, financiers, and men of letters, including the renowned Cicero, danced in attendance.” Michael Parenti
Louis Picasso: I’m reading the same book, and I have a better one!
“In a prologue to Caesar and Cleopatra [George Bernard Shaw] that is almost never performed, the god Ra tells the audience how Rome discovered that ‘the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak.’ In conformity with that dictum, the Romans ‘robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest.’ And after squeezing their own people dry, they stripped the poor throughout the many other lands they conquered.” Michael Parenti
Aristotle Michelangelo: Shrugged his shoulders unconsciously, “Chez Bricktop in Paris?”
Louis Picasso: Not now. I am having a violent reaction to prescription drugs! My body is like, ‘Don’t put that shit down here again!’ They gave me all this medication for Acute Caesarion whatever — and I took it! Of course, you don’t exhaust the shit. You’re not an idiot. But, what the fuck? Where the weed at?”
Aristotle Michelangelo: I think it would be dope to channel Kerouac’s apology for automatic writing.
“He likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow, and unrestrained association, to reveal the unconscious… because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose!” Dystopia, Explode 2015 2.0
So, here goes… They called her Marnie — behind her back. I was torn. I played with variations of Marnie. Black Marnie. Brown Marnie, Tortilla Marnie. It’s the language of found art. Bansky, Kehinde, Jazz, Hip Hop… They teased each other. Hitchcock’s Margaret, Mary, Marnie, teases Mark, so she could get the combination, to his company safe, and steal the money. She was a Kleptomaniac, a compulsive thief. A killer. She disappears. On the run! He tracks her like an animal, and finds her at a Lodge, riding her horse to the stables. He orders her off the horse, tells her she’ll walk — he’ll ride. He interrogates her. She tells him a bullshit story she can’t keep straight. He calls it, manure! Tells her to start over from the beginning, and this time — tell the truth. Back at the Lodge – he tells her to freshen up, change her clothes so he might take her to the police – she thinks. She does not know… It’s Tippi Hedren in RL! The white woman of a black man’s dreams – when he dreams about white women. Blonde, pearly white teeth and skin — Barbie! Beckie! He tells her, they will return to ‘the house’ and announce they are engaged, would to be married within the week and then cruise around the world. Of course, she thinks he’s “Out of his mind!” He told her, it was either marriage or the police, old girl. Black Marnie. Who would play her?
They get married. Eventually he takes her virginity. She tries to commit suicide. I don’t think I want to go there… Suicide. Who should play Mark? [#nomoreslavestories.] Does he catch her?
Aristotle Michelangelo: Pussy Riot danced in the cathedral — goes to jail, and the artist nailed his scrotum to the Red Square. She’s a prisoner of love. That kind of love makes me uncomfortable, racked, and anguished like a pet must be around possessive people. The energy is ignitable like the choice between blowing up and letting go. I don’t want to belong to anyone. But, what do I know about love?
Louis Picasso: Black people don’t like black people. That’s why we’re in this — hole… barrel, bucket, duck it, fuck it… We know it’s true. Listen to the tonal center of this beat!
Aristotle Michelangelo: In sixty revolutions a minute, if it’s not organic, I can’t get with it. Hate is not organic. Hate is a social construct. I want to live the life I swam to the egg for… A social construct is like zoon pushed to the egg, by stronger swimmers behind it. It’s still goal niggaz. I want an organic experience on this gridiron. A certain freedom, mere man can’t give, conceive or contrive. I want freedom Divine. You want to be free — you have to fuggin’ work for it. Zufi?
Aristotle Michelangelo: You need money, software and rigs in the virtual world. Bombs are obsolete. Race and gender is a pastiche — game challenges for points.
Louis Picasso: Beauty and power is iconography and homely stamps are hiccups – and brick and mortar is a path to experience the destruction of daredevils and matadors — in coliseums of pestilence and poverty – empirically.
Aristotle Michelangelo: Why go there? When, life is a perfect dream in a virtual world.
Louis Picasso: IJS. Get on board with — evolution. Evolution is not physical space. It’s the diamond life in our heads on a loop. Its VR not the moon…
Aristotle Michelangelo: I love wearing the mask! You can’t see my countenance — in La La Land, my eyes may smile. My lip may curl up or down… I’m an introvert; an INTJ — is that Caprino?
Louis Picasso: Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, it will be impossible to ignore slavery in America… Why are some Black Americans worrying about slavery in America being taught in schools? The horse is out of the barn! Instead of embracing Juneteenth and all that it implies… Black Americans are WHINING and using the language of slaves, “they won’t, let us, allow us, give us and get…” Instead black Americans are still looking the other way when a black man drags a black woman by her hair [DC], and black people are murdered by black people in Chicago – for giggles. June 19, 2021 marks the day, that Black America must acknowledge that ‘we’ are no longer slaves and assume responsibility — that’s what freedom is.
Copyright 2016, 2018, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast rewritten or redistributed without permission.
If you can, imagine Seven Whole Days on repeat… and you were raised in the city of Boston — where Playhouse in the Park is the only alternative to hot house parties, in Orchard Park or Ruggles Street — and dancing room is a premium for a chilly Bostonian, with a New England attitude.
When four seasons and rapid transit affords you the opportunity to go anywhere at any time, wearing everything a Bostonian can — properly — weather be damned… then you know how much space love demands. In an apartment when body heat is canned and cool, you learn to slow dance in the place you pick with just the space between grace and pressure. Boston, is the only city in America that knows how to have sex on legs. If you think it’s a mere grind — you can’t dance in a vacuum. The only thing a man can do, if he’s not a Bostonian, is let the lady lead when she is a Bostonian, and hope — its a long song.
Copyright 2004, and 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller (Explode: Epic Poetry ~ Excerpt from (Behind Pushkin’s Coffee House)), and the One Act Play — Springboard! All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The scene takes place in a private home theater under a Proscenium arch. Stage right is a door to the dining area. Stage left is a door to the great room. Upstage is a grand screen.
It is Tess and Said’s turn to host the Football Sunday dinner party for three married couples – their closest friends. Tess’ single BFF, CeCe with the gratuitous beauty, on everyone’s dream team (and it is rude to stare) is visiting from the city – and having so much more to offer, as usual she is flying too close to the sun and upsetting the social balance.
CECE: I have a story to tell! I promise you — you’re going to love it! You simply must experience it. The absolute audacity of the writer is stunning. She’s THAT motherfucker. (Giggle) That bitch. Tricky — Romanticist. Epic like the Iliad…
CONVERSATIONS HAPPENING IN THE ROUND END DOWNSTAGE
UPSTAGE
SAID: Of course you have data. Do you know how to use it? Give me data. I’ll give you algorithms… synced with the principles of Six Sigma. It’s over.
TESS: I said, If you don’t knock on my door, someone else will.
STAGE LEFT
ETAN: Evidently, you’re attracted to me, and I applaud you for knowing who you want. I’m flattered. But, I don’t sway that way.
WIFE: What did he say?
ETAN: “It doesn’t matter.”
WIFE: Oh! O-kay… (LOOKS AWAY STAGE RIGHT WITH A GAFFAW) He’s funny.
ETAN: Define funny.
WIFE: Funny is funny.
ETAN: What’s funny to you, may not be funny to me.
WIFE: Are we going to go back and forth on what is funny? I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Project #99 (GAFFAW) Again. You pushed me… But, it was good. It’s true. Where was I? I’m crazy! Yeah. No doubt… (LOOKS AWAY) But, I love you.
TWO BEATS
WIFE: I’m kickstarting my project this week. (THROWS HEAD BACK DEFIANTLY)
WIFE: (SUDDENLY) You said, I would be your wife, not your slave.
DOWNSTAGE LENA WHISPERS TO LUDA AND THE AUDIENCE
LENA: So, what if it’s all true? Does that give you the right to kick my ass and keep it moving? You’re a mutation. It does not sound like we’re the lazy ones. We will survive. You will not… and if that’s true why would I compete with you, when you are doing all the work? You cannot survive without us. We’re going with. Wouldn’t you?
HOMEMAKER: Look babe, it’s tulle and mesh — and if I bend over just right…
KENT: I am not going to kiss your ass (Chuckles)
HOMEMAKER: Why not? You’ve been kissing it.
KENT: Don’t try to goad me into an argument to justify your own.
HOMEMAKER: I’m just saying… if it’s in our heads, it’s pure fantasy. Don’t float what you imagine out here in the void, like what you think is really real. If it’s not real… like your hands on me — it’s fiction. You cannot possibly know what I think, how I feel, how I will respond to your bullshit… or even how you will respond to mine. I thought? When was the last time you imagined a confrontation? Of course, it never happens like the movies in our heads. Not even close! But, to be content to covet the same dreams, is so… unimaginative. Is that the best we can do? To be part of a crowd? Look at me. (VOGUES) I am the fastest swimmer in a sea of zoon!
KENT: (Chuckles) Who the fuck are you reading lately?
HOMEMAKER: (Playfully) We have to spend more time together! I do have a wonderful quote… “I have a lesson for you. Do you want it?”
KENT: “I have a lesson for you. Do you want it?” Who said that?
HOMEMAKER: My mother… in so many words.
KENT: He called me Money.
(HE BEGINS LIKE A STORY SHE’S HEARD BEFORE)
KENT: (CONTINUES) He said, I want a boy who gets what he came for. A boy who knows he’s the strongest swimmer in a sea of zoon. It’s true, a boy could have been pushed by stronger swimmers behind him. Like Mad Max. I want a boy who would survive the hood. A boy that knows changing direction is nothing. The trick is to breathe again. That’s the boy I want. Do you think you could be that boy? I would sit up straight, tip my head, and say, Yes Sir. I’m that boy.
HOMEMAKER: Every time you tell that story I’d forget to mention, it feels like he’s looming over you. What were you sitting on?
KENT: My potty chair… I thought you knew?
HOMEMAKER: Oh no. He didn’t! (GIGGLES) Your father is bananas.
KENT AND HOMEMAKER LAUGH TOGETHER
KENT: Jules Winfield reciting Ezekiel.
HOMEMAKER: That’s why you’re so ambitious. I love that about you, Honey. Look at us! We’re a Stupid Power Couple.
KENT: (CHUCKLES) The first time we met, I wondered… how does THAT work? (LAUGHS)
(HOMEMAKER FIGHTS A SMILE)
KENT: You said, “I’m not looking for a husband.”
(BOTH LAUGH ON KEY)
HOMEMAKER: You want to play with me? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?
STAGE LEFT
(HUDDLING WITH HIS SILENT WIFE)
ETAN: Conscious decisions are all that I can respect. Don’t cling to insanity, or criminal passion, or peer pressure, or social expectations. Don’t talk to me about losing control — momentarily. Or, the poverty and violence of pain heaped upon more pain because you’re black. This is not a gang-rape. This is not Dionysia all over again, where women and children are sacrificed, and blood is beer. If I change my language, the outcome will still be the same… (STOP)
(THREE BEATS)
ETAN: Jack Kerouac… likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow and unrestrained association to reveal the unconscious… because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose! Am I going to read that trippy book again, with absolutely no punctuation period, when I can imagine my very own Mardou Fox?
STARING OPENLY AT ETAN, LUDA STOPS LISTENING AND LOOKING UP TO THE HEAVENS, STROKES HIS BEARD, AND TURNS TO THE AUDIENCE WITH A SECOND SOLILOQUY.
LUDA TURNS AWAY FROM HIS AUDIENCE AND LOOKS STAGE RIGHT AT KENT
A PHONE HELD IN KENT’S HAND ILLUMINATES HIS FACE. KENT SPEAKS LOUD [AS IF] SIGNALING THE END
KENT: A black man is charged with burning black Churches in St. Louis Missouri…
KENT LOOKS UP FROM THE SCREEN. HIS FACE IS STILL. EYES UNFOCUSED. HE MOVES HIS LIPS.
KENT: Unbelieveable.
HOMEMAKER: I’m gonna’ need to pinch him.
KENT AND THE HOMEMAKER THROW THEIR HEADS BACK IN HEARTY LAUGHTER. THE HOMEMAKER SUDDENLY STOPS AND LOOKS AT KENT. WHISPERS.
HOMEMAKER: Wake up, blue pill.
THE HOMEMAKER LOOKS AT THE AUDIENCE — IN A MONOLOGUE — LOUDER THAN KENT.
HOMEMAKER: It’s the Age of STEM. With VRs for your fancies, imagining aggressions you never lose. Where are we going? Who are we doing? How shall we dress for the joie de vivre? I want to meet the best Black Rock Band on the planet and their Muse; to be the woman in the Dolmus, the Driver, Simon… I want to hear Luda deliver his soliloquies in a courtyard enclosed by trees, with stapled bark once covered with flyers — for missing pets, and outworn, archaic, and unimaginative campaigns and trade for sale or giveaway. I want to be where someone says, I have a story to tell, and those who’ve heard the story reply, we’re watching the game in a minute… I know how the story ends.
(WITH A MONA LISA SMILE)
HOMEMAKER: (TAGGING) I am sorry, but, honestly, the 21st Century is so… contrived. (STOPS SHORT OF LAUGHTER) Let’s move along.
CENTER STAGE
CECE: We have plenty of time! Indulge me. I’m going to read it.
(MORE RESTLESS MOVEMENT)
CECE: Come on! It’s my birthday! Okay, it’s not my birthday….Listen! This is a quote from Interview magazine. I think it’s poetic. “I use pot for depression, and I am depressed often. When I am high, I am very creative, and because my word is work in progress, I have no regrets. Self actualization is anticlimactic… I am the hopeless writer. I spent most of my life being angry that I, didn’t have an audience that would pay for my work. Girls, gotta’ make a living. It’s amazing what turns people on. It’s not at all what I imagined. I spent too much time trying to create a persona, when I am one. I suppose it’s okay to spend your life chasing a dream. You have to have one or two to live for.” She’s extra… Did I mention Ovid?
If you don’t like it (PAUSE) I’ll blow every cock in the room.
Like all writers, I rewrite, combine, borrow, loot, recreate, change my own work, and play with metafictional devices and the relationship between what is real and what is imagined. I combined “TP’s Muse Board” with “The Foreword to Insomnia.” Perhaps it will be a triptych, or perhaps three panels of an octaptych, a short story, novella, or perhaps a novel. It’s a WIP.
The Foreword to Insomnia
“All our crimes are the crimes of a phantom: God.” Octavio Paz
I
Is the girl necessary? Can you abandon her? Yes and no. She’s the curtain-lifter and the scout! Always. I cannot forget her. I was there, talking to myself, as if I were someone else. Like now.
She’s as necessary as the galoshes on her feet, paused in a puddle, with her binary reflection obscured by polka-dots, vector and speckled umbrellas billowing from ordinary windows like parachutes, or the multi-colored aureoles in the virtual vertigo — of an art installation.
She is as necessary as umbrellas on a rainy afternoon under golden arches and digital displays of saucer eyed anime faces in Tokyo during rush-hours, or the dark city around the corner with a hole in the ground — over rainy subway stairs she lost a galosh on.
II
When she was nine, and her sister seven, they shared a bedroom in the attic of an old Victorian house, in New England. They loved that pink triangular room, and the imaginary line that equally divided that sanctum, and it was not lost on them, that they were far removed from their extended paternal family, parents and the Irish triplets who shared a room of their own — downstairs.
It was not just the physical detachment, but on the heels of “making believe,” they began to transport each other to fictional realities at bedtime that began with a question, followed by an answer and finally a bidding, “What are you doing?” “I’m thinking.” “What are you thinking about?”
Her stories would often begin with something truly extraordinary. Diana Ross had ten kids in 1964! She was twenty years old and married to Jorge — the Ebony Fashion Fair model who was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and one of Diana’s children was her fourth grade classmate — a Puerto Rican named, Sorah Sanchez. He told his classmates to call him Willie. He was so cute!
Theirs was the perfect family! Jorge wore gray suede shoes and cardigans advertised in Jet and Ebony magazines, and the children wore clothing from Alden and Spiegel catalogs! Images were accessible and appropriated. The stories epic and uninterrupted — unless clarification was necessary, like “What time do the kids have to go to bed?”
She loved The Supremes! In the Sixties, Diana Ross was a delicate and beautiful remix, of freedom from ugly restraint. She could scan a page for “Diana Ross” and find her like code. Ditty Bop! She could imitate her voice, her tone, inflection, her vibrato, choreography and her mannerisms!
In the Summer of 1965, she sang A cappella, “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” and “Come See About Me,” on a makeshift stage in her back yard, and became an accidental star with a teenaged fan base; but, she just wanted to be left alone to adore Diana Ross — the beautiful one! Those oral narratives in the dark — were contiguous, on a continuum, interconnected — in medias res.
III
At seventeen she hadn’t seen her Father in four or five years. Her mother and six children took the last bus to a safe haven twelve hundred miles from Boston. But, when father walked into her home, the house her mother managed to “negotiate” by “befriending” the most unattractive man she had ever seen… and barely past the threshold, he said, “I know, I know, I know, and I know.”
It was the most honest response she’d ever heard. It made sense. No apologies. No explanations. What else could he say? Last year, she wondered why she and her sister screamed their hearts out of their mouths, eyes, and ears crouched in a closet — as if screaming would make a difference — as if screams would stop unmeasured and random assaults on her Mother in a Commonwealth where the Rule of Thumb allowed husbands to beat their wives as long as the stick was no thicker than his thumb!
In that house, little girls might not stop screams with their own. Who could scream the loudest? Who could silence the noise? Eventually, she realized the house was on Rockledge Street before pre-K, so they were one and three, or two and four years old, perhaps. In a one mile radius, the same thing happened on Cedar and Alpine Streets. On Hartford Street, her Father cut her Mother up with a meat cleaver.
She can still summon the smell of Sugar Smacks decayed and stinking in bowls of spoiled milk abandoned on the kitchen table like so much blood and flesh on the floors, doors, the papered walls, and ceiling where on her Sister’s 9th birthday, “the accident” happened.
The blood of donors rushed from other jurisdictions, the white sheet that hid her mother’s head from her children, the paddy wagon where her mother was slung like a criminal, the crowd outside the window oohing and awing, jeering, and cheering her Father, who changed into a brown silk leisure suit, brown suede shoes, cocked a fedora on his head and walked tall, proud, and un-cuffed to the Police car. The footnote in the Boston Globe, “Negro Man Attacks Wife with Meat Cleaver.” The rise and fall of orphan’s tears, swollen eyes, praying hands and bargains with God in zombie disbelief.
But, I don’t feel sorry for that little girl. Tall and proud. She could have been a psycho killer — and I would be her muse, a tiny detail, a paper doll from an Alden’s catalog — paused in a puddle for the amusement of children.
IV
I am the one who cannot sleep. Aside from occasional drifts from the pollen consumption of moths, to the dignity of a ski-lift nose…
Copyright 2004, 2013 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
