private writing against writing for any stranger with a search engine. “I want you to think and feel, not sell. Your writing should be an intimate meal, not dinner theater.”
They shrug at his nostalgia. They’ll take a spin in the Wayback Machine, just for the sheer novelty.
Sue Weston details her current artwork. “It’s called ‘Magpie.’ I stand in Daley Plaza, jotting down the things people say into their cells. Then I post it on a tumblelog. Amazing, what people will tell a street full of strangers.”
Roberto Muñoz whispers, “I’m amazed you think that’s ethical.” A hoot comes from the group, and soon it’s an art-student free-for-all. Russell Stone watches his lesson plan vanish.
Adam Tovar describes his automatic spirit writing. “I just let it come.” After a roll-call vote, the class decides that ghosts do indeed exist and are the soul’s upload to virtual storage.
“Writing always comes from beyond the grave, anyway,” John Thornell says. “I mean, either the author or audience is already dead, or will be soon.”
The Algerian watches fascinated, like a child fresh from months in the sick bay, at a tennis match under a spotless sky. The others ignore her, with pretend nonchalance. But when Thassadit does raise her finger, the room freezes. “In my country? During the Time of Horrors . . . ?”
Russell loses her words. Something about her father being shot for writing a letter, but she speaks so serenely it must be a metaphor. Stone knows nothing about Algeria except that it’s a former French colony with an astronomically impossible flag. Their civil war is news to him. The whole world is news to him.
The Berber’s ready grin unnerves the Americans, who return to the ethics of eavesdropping. She resumes watching them, handspeaceful on the table, centered in herself, smiling through the discussion as if it’s the most entertaining feature film.
This first night’s class runs overtime before Russell can get through a quarter of his notes. He assigns them twenty pages from
Make Your Writing Come Alive
, half apologizing for the text, as if someone else chose it. He gives them their first journal assignment, the one about rescuing one fragment from their last day worth telling a perfect stranger. They’ll read their entries out loud together, two nights from now. “Have fun,” he tells them, avoiding the eyes of the Algerian. “Surprise me.”
Then he stumbles back out through Building Security into the September night. The Loop has quieted. Its 3-D lattice of light now looks like the twitch-grid computer games his brother is addicted to. Nine million lives from here out to the horizon, and God only knows how many art schools calling it quits for the night. Night classes in Lima will follow in an hour. Day classes in Tianjin are already under way.
It strikes me that my adjunct has never heard of Tianjin. He boards the northbound Red Line at Roosevelt, avoiding the sparsely populated cars. The train emerges from its grotto into a canyon flanked by the backsides of brick apartments scaffolded in wooden fire escapes. Tonight’s glow turns tenements into upscale condos. He’s elated by how well his first class has gone. He spends the subway ride scribbling an account of the last two hours into his own journal. He describes his students’ willful naïveté and fearless self-invention.
What would life be like
, he writes,
if art students finally had their revolution?
Russell Stone doesn’t answer his own question. I watch him trying to decide no more than God.
In his studio apartment in Logan Square, he makes himself a one-hand sandwich of wilted veg and cheese, from which he scrapes a thin skin of mold. Then he sits down to find
Kabylie
. He wants to see it on a printed page, not online. He finds it in the atlas. In the Atlas Mountains. The place is a rugged hideaway, a separatist hot spot full of goats and olive trees, a land graced by all accounts with the most aromatic
They shrug at his nostalgia. They’ll take a spin in the Wayback Machine, just for the sheer novelty.
Sue Weston details her current artwork. “It’s called ‘Magpie.’ I stand in Daley Plaza, jotting down the things people say into their cells. Then I post it on a tumblelog. Amazing, what people will tell a street full of strangers.”
Roberto Muñoz whispers, “I’m amazed you think that’s ethical.” A hoot comes from the group, and soon it’s an art-student free-for-all. Russell Stone watches his lesson plan vanish.
Adam Tovar describes his automatic spirit writing. “I just let it come.” After a roll-call vote, the class decides that ghosts do indeed exist and are the soul’s upload to virtual storage.
“Writing always comes from beyond the grave, anyway,” John Thornell says. “I mean, either the author or audience is already dead, or will be soon.”
The Algerian watches fascinated, like a child fresh from months in the sick bay, at a tennis match under a spotless sky. The others ignore her, with pretend nonchalance. But when Thassadit does raise her finger, the room freezes. “In my country? During the Time of Horrors . . . ?”
Russell loses her words. Something about her father being shot for writing a letter, but she speaks so serenely it must be a metaphor. Stone knows nothing about Algeria except that it’s a former French colony with an astronomically impossible flag. Their civil war is news to him. The whole world is news to him.
The Berber’s ready grin unnerves the Americans, who return to the ethics of eavesdropping. She resumes watching them, handspeaceful on the table, centered in herself, smiling through the discussion as if it’s the most entertaining feature film.
This first night’s class runs overtime before Russell can get through a quarter of his notes. He assigns them twenty pages from
Make Your Writing Come Alive
, half apologizing for the text, as if someone else chose it. He gives them their first journal assignment, the one about rescuing one fragment from their last day worth telling a perfect stranger. They’ll read their entries out loud together, two nights from now. “Have fun,” he tells them, avoiding the eyes of the Algerian. “Surprise me.”
Then he stumbles back out through Building Security into the September night. The Loop has quieted. Its 3-D lattice of light now looks like the twitch-grid computer games his brother is addicted to. Nine million lives from here out to the horizon, and God only knows how many art schools calling it quits for the night. Night classes in Lima will follow in an hour. Day classes in Tianjin are already under way.
It strikes me that my adjunct has never heard of Tianjin. He boards the northbound Red Line at Roosevelt, avoiding the sparsely populated cars. The train emerges from its grotto into a canyon flanked by the backsides of brick apartments scaffolded in wooden fire escapes. Tonight’s glow turns tenements into upscale condos. He’s elated by how well his first class has gone. He spends the subway ride scribbling an account of the last two hours into his own journal. He describes his students’ willful naïveté and fearless self-invention.
What would life be like
, he writes,
if art students finally had their revolution?
Russell Stone doesn’t answer his own question. I watch him trying to decide no more than God.
In his studio apartment in Logan Square, he makes himself a one-hand sandwich of wilted veg and cheese, from which he scrapes a thin skin of mold. Then he sits down to find
Kabylie
. He wants to see it on a printed page, not online. He finds it in the atlas. In the Atlas Mountains. The place is a rugged hideaway, a separatist hot spot full of goats and olive trees, a land graced by all accounts with the most aromatic
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