The C.I.A.‘s “Bestiary of Intelligence Writing” Satirizes Spook Jargon with Maurice Sendak-Style Drawings

in Comedy, Creativity, English Language, History | October 17th, 2014

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Ten years in acad­e­mia gave me a healthy dis­like of clichéd jar­gon, as well as an appre­ci­a­tion for jokes about it. There are a few, like the aca­d­e­m­ic sen­tence gen­er­a­tor and Ph.D. Comics, that cap­ture a bit of what it’s like to go to school and work in high­er ed. Cor­po­rate drones, of course, have Office Space and Dil­bert. But what about the spooks, those name­less, face­less agents who work tire­less­ly away in the base­ment of Lan­g­ley, doing who knows what to whom? Where does the C.I.A. go to laugh at its pecu­liar brand of hack­neyed dou­ble­s­peak? Not that we were sup­posed to know this, but per­haps many of them turn to an arti­cle called “the Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” in a 1982 copy of inter­nal agency newslet­ter Stud­ies in Intel­li­gence.

CIA 2

Medi­um describes this odd piece as a “zoo of fic­tion­al fau­na,” and like that strange lit­er­ary form, the medieval Euro­pean bes­tiary (often a source of satire and cri­tique), this 17-page arti­cle, with foot­notes, sin­gles out the most offen­sive spook buzz­words as though they were car­di­nal sins—naming 15 mem­bers of “the Col­lec­tion” in all, each one rep­re­sent­ed by its own Mau­rice Sendak-like pen­cil-drawn beast and a descrip­tion of its habits. The two-head­ed beast at the top, Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Analy­sis, is a “hybrid—the fruit of the casu­al mat­ing of stan­dard forms of Analy­sis.” Just above, we have Height­ened Ten­sions, “the adult form of Con­ven­tion­al Tensions—Tensions that have acquired stilts by thriv­ing on a rich diet of pover­ty, mal­nu­tri­tion and espe­cial­ly alien­ation.” Sounds like rough work, this spy game….

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Most of the beasts are cud­dly enough, some mis­chie­vous, some per­haps dead­ly. Above, we have Dire Straits and below, Para­me­ters. “The Agency author and artist detailed 15 mon­sters in all—complete with illus­tra­tions,” writes Medi­um, “Both of their names are redact­ed in the doc­u­ment. We’ll nev­er know just which CIA agents turned their hand towards snarky polit­i­cal satire.” The doc­u­ment comes to us via a cache of records declas­si­fied in a law­suit filed by for­mer agency employ­ee Jef­fry Scud­der. We do know that the two anony­mous lam­poon­ists were inspired by A Polit­i­cal Bes­tiary, book by James Kil­patrick, car­toon­ist Jeff Mac­Nel­ly, and for­mer sen­a­tor and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eugene McCarthy. See the full, bone dry arti­cle here, and think about the work talk that might dri­ve you to such cre­ative extremes.

CIA 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spy

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

How the CIA Turned Doc­tor Zhiva­go into a Pro­pa­gan­da Weapon Against the Sovi­et Union

Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ment Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty at Risk

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Drums West: Jim Henson’s Animated Tribute to Jazz Drummer Chico Hamilton (1961)

in Animation, Creativity, Music | September 3rd, 2014

Judg­ing by behind-the-scenes footage of a beard­less Jim Hen­son ani­mat­ing “Drums West,” a 1961 homage to jazz drum­mer Chico Hamil­ton, one good sneeze and the par­ty would’ve been over.

Ani­ma­tion is always a painstak­ing propo­si­tion, but the hun­dreds of tiny paper scraps Hen­son was con­tend­ing with in an extreme­ly cramped work­ing space seem down­right oppres­sive com­pared to the expan­sive visu­als to which they gave rise.

The fin­ished piece’s con­struc­tion paper fire­works are every­thing iTunes Visu­al­iz­er func­tion strives to be. Speak­ing for myself, I can’t envi­sion any com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed abstrac­tion open­ing a mag­ic por­tal that sud­den­ly allowed even a philis­tine like me to appre­ci­ate a brush solo steeped in 50’s‑era West Coast cool.

Sure­ly Dr. Teeth would be down.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Footage From 1969

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Miranda July’s Quirky Film Presents Somebody, the New App That Connects Strangers in the Real World

in Creativity, iPhone, Technology | September 1st, 2014

Hav­ing owned an iPhone for all of one month, I’m still a bit leery of all it can pur­port­ed­ly do for me. Con­ve­nience is great, but I’m not sure I’m ready to cede con­trol of all the lit­tle tasks, chal­lenges, and puz­zles my own imper­fect brain has been han­dling more or less well for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry.

I don’t hate blun­der­ing. And I real­ly like inter­act­ing with librar­i­ans, local res­i­dents, and strangers who might be will­ing to use my cam­era to take a group pho­to in a restau­rant or scenic loca­tion. 

Film­mak­er Miran­da July’s just released Some­body is, I sus­pect, some­thing of a niche app.

If you cringe at the idea of flash mobs, Improv Every­where, and audi­ence inter­ac­tive the­ater, it is most def­i­nite­ly not for you. 

It’s absolute­ly per­fect for me (or will be once I get up to speed on my touch­screen.)

Basi­cal­ly, you take a self­ie, cre­ate a pro­file, and wait for a stranger to select you to deliv­er a live mes­sage as his or her proxy. In addi­tion to trawl­ing the area for the des­ig­nat­ed recip­i­ent, you may be called upon to weep, hug, or get on your knees to get that mes­sage across.

Will you make a new friend? Prob­a­bly not, but you will def­i­nite­ly share a moment.

And because no good deed goes unre­ward­ed, your per­for­mance will be open to the vagaries of cus­tomer review, a humil­i­a­tion July does not shy from in the pro­mo­tion­al video above.

Is this app for real?

Yes, espe­cial­ly if you live in LA, New York, or anoth­er cul­tur­al­ly rich Some­body hotspot.

If you don’t—or if receiv­ing a mes­sage deliv­ered, in all like­li­hood, by a tech savvy hip­ster, makes your flesh crawl—you can still enjoy the film as a com­ment on our dig­i­tal exis­tence, as well as a reflec­tion of July’s ongo­ing desire to con­nect.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Miran­da July’s Short Film on Avoid­ing the Pit­falls of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion

Learn to Make But­tons with Film­mak­er Miran­da July

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Flannery O’Connor’s Satirical Cartoons: 1942–1945

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Literature, Writing | July 10th, 2014

Sci-fi author B.C. Kowal­s­ki recent­ly post­ed a short essay on why the advice to write every day is, for lack of a suit­able euphemism, “bull­shit.” Not that there’s any­thing wrong with it, Kowal­s­ki main­tains. Only that it’s not the only way. It’s said Thack­er­ay wrote every morn­ing at dawn. Jack Ker­ouac wrote (and drank) in binges. Every writer finds some method in-between. The point is to “do what works for you” and to “exper­i­ment.” Kowal­s­ki might have added a third term: diver­si­fy. It’s worked for so many famous writ­ers after all. James Joyce had his music, Sylvia Plath her art, Hem­ing­way his machis­mo. Faulkn­er drew car­toons, as did his fel­low South­ern writer Flan­nery O’Connor, his equal, I’d say, in the art of the Amer­i­can grotesque. Through both writ­ers ran a deep vein of pes­simistic humor, oblique, but detectable, even in scenes of high­est pathos.

 

O’Connor’s visu­al work, writes Kel­ly Ger­ald in The Paris Review, was a “way of see­ing she described as part of the ‘habit of art’”—a way to train her fic­tion writer’s eye. Her car­toons hew close­ly to her autho­r­i­al voice: a lone sar­don­ic observ­er, supreme­ly con­fi­dent in her assess­ments of human weak­ness. Per­haps a bet­ter com­par­i­son than Faulkn­er is with British poet and doo­dler Ste­vie Smith, whose bleak vision and razor-sharp wit sim­i­lar­ly cut through moun­tains of… shall we say, bull­shit. In both pen & ink and linoleum cuts, O’Connor set dead­pan one-lin­ers against images of pre­ten­sion, con­for­mi­ty, and the banal­i­ty of col­lege life. In the car­toon at the top, she seems to mock the pur­suit of cre­den­tials as a refuge for the social­ly dis­af­fect­ed. Above, a cam­paign­er for a low-lev­el office deploys bom­bas­tic pseu­do-Lenin­ist rhetoric, and in the car­toon below, a cranky char­ac­ter escapes a horde of iden­ti­cal WAVES.

O’Connor was an intense­ly visu­al writer with, Ger­ald writes, a “nat­ur­al pro­cliv­i­ty for cap­tur­ing the humor­ous char­ac­ter of real peo­ple and con­crete sit­u­a­tions,” ful­ly cred­i­ble even at their most extreme (as in the increas­ing­ly hor­rif­ic self-lac­er­a­tions of Wise Blood’s Hazel Motes). She began draw­ing at five and pro­duced small books and sketch­es as a child, even­tu­al­ly pub­lish­ing car­toons in almost every issue of her high-school and college’s news­pa­pers and year­books. Her alma mater Geor­gia Col­lege, then known as Geor­gia State Col­lege for Women, has pub­lished a book fea­tur­ing her car­toons from her under­grad­u­ate years, 1942–45.

More recent­ly, Ger­ald edit­ed a col­lec­tion called Flan­nery O’Connor: The Car­toons for Fan­ta­graph­ics. In his intro­duc­tion, artist Bar­ry Moser describes in detail the tech­nique of her linoleum cuts, call­ing them “coarse in tech­ni­cal terms.” And yet, “her rudi­men­ta­ry han­dling of the medi­um notwith­stand­ing, O’Connor’s prints offer glimpses into the work of the writer she would become” with their “lit­tle O’Connor petards aimed at the walls of pre­ten­tious­ness, aca­d­e­mics, stu­dent pol­i­tics, and stu­dent com­mit­tees.” Had O’Connor con­tin­ued mak­ing car­toons into her pub­lish­ing years, she might have, like B.C. Kowal­s­ki, aimed one of those petards at those who dis­pense dog­mat­ic, cook­ie-cut­ter writ­ing advice as well.

via Geor­gia Col­lege/The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Sonny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Practicing Yoga Made Him a Better Musician

in Creativity, Health, Music, Religion | June 30th, 2014

Indi­an mys­tic and philoso­pher Patan­jali sup­pos­ed­ly cre­at­ed mod­ern yoga by trans­mit­ting his doc­trine and dis­ci­plines to sev­en sages. In the mid-1950s, those teach­ings came down through the cen­turies to anoth­er sage, Son­ny Rollins, who, like his good friend John Coltrane, incor­po­rat­ed his exper­i­ments with East­ern spir­i­tu­al­i­ty into his jazz impro­vi­sa­tions. In Rollins’ case, yoga has giv­en him, as he recounts in the short video above, “spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing” and “direc­tion.” Set­ting out for India in 1967 to find “uplift­ment,” Rollins checked him­self into an Ashram, with noth­ing but a bag and his horn, “and it worked out well,” he says. Rollins and his jazz “com­pa­tri­ots” like Coltrane “were try­ing to find a way to express life through our impro­vi­sa­tions,” he tells NPR. “The music has got to mean some­thing,” he says, “Jazz impro­vi­sa­tion is sup­posed to be the high­est form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and get­ting that to the peo­ple is our job as musi­cians.”

In his new set of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 3, Rollins plays a “mantra-like” song called “Patan­jali,” a trib­ute to the dis­ci­pline that keeps him phys­i­cal­ly and musi­cal­ly vital. In his “Morn­ing Edi­tion” inter­view above, Rollins describes his yoga prac­tice as help­ing his “con­cen­tra­tion lev­el.” “The thing is this,” he says, “When I play, what I try to do is to reach my sub­con­scious lev­el. I don’t want to overt­ly think about any­thing, because you can’t think and play at the same time—believe me, I’ve tried.” At age 83, and still sound­ing as fresh as he does, one imag­ines he’s tried it all and learned some valu­able lessons. In 1963, Rollins met the Oki Yoga group in Japan, who com­bine yoga, Zen, and mar­tial arts prin­ci­ples, and he’s also stud­ied Rosi­cru­cian­ism, Bud­dhism, and “Kab­bal­ah, even—I was real­ly into those philoso­phies of life.”

As for whether Son­ny Rollins con­sid­ers him­self a mem­ber of any par­tic­u­lar sect, hear his thoughts on orga­nized reli­gion in answer to a recent Google Hang­out ques­tion (above). While he may not sub­scribe to a spe­cif­ic belief sys­tem, he’s cer­tain­ly found spir­i­tu­al tech­niques that give him—as he puts it in an inter­view with Yoga Jour­nal—“a cen­ter.” Rollins “still prac­tices asana [pos­es] every day, includ­ing Halasana (Plow Pose) and Urd­h­va Dha­nurasana (Upward Bow Pose).” Want to learn more about yoga? You could always read Patanjali’s famous sutras. For more prac­ti­cal instruc­tion in this peace­ful phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline, per­haps take a look at the rather iron­i­cal­ly named Les­ley Fightmaster’s Youtube chan­nel, with free lessons for vir­tu­al­ly every­one.

Of course, no one teacher should be con­sid­ered the author­i­ty on yoga. Like every spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, yoga has its many schisms and divi­sions, even so-called “Yoga Wars”: among Hin­dus and Chris­tians, between cor­po­rate giants like Lul­ule­mon (and West­ern teach­ers like Fight­mas­ter) and tra­di­tion­al Indi­an prac­ti­tion­ers, between “Hot Yoga” (and its con­tro­ver­sial founder) and every­one else…. I doubt Son­ny Rollins has time to get enmeshed in these squab­bles, and maybe nei­ther do you. For a much less uptight fusion of East­ern prac­tice and West­ern spir­it, per­haps try some Star Wars Yoga. In this video, instruc­tor Eri­ca Vetra offers a free beginner’s class for those who “A. love Star Wars, B. have nev­er seen Star Wars, C. love yoga, or D. have nev­er done yoga.” The ecu­meni­cal Son­ny Rollins might approve, though the ven­er­a­ble Patan­jali, indif­fer­ent to “fan­cy” and “illu­sion,” may not have been amused.

via A Piece of Mono­logue

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ny Rollins’ New York City Bridge Sab­bat­i­cal Recre­at­ed in 1977 Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics Ad

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Advice to Young Aspiring Artists from Patti Smith, David Byrne & Marina Abramović

in Creativity, K-12, Life, Music, Poetry | June 23rd, 2014

If you dream of becom­ing the next Dis­ney Chan­nel star, you’d do well to heed the advice of cast­ing direc­tor Judy Tay­lor, who uses “read” and “tal­ent” accord­ing to their indus­try def­i­n­i­tions, and seems unlike­ly to cut any­one slack for youth or inex­pe­ri­ence.

If, how­ev­er, you’ve got the soul of a poet, a painter, a musi­cal adven­tur­er, all three, or none of the above, I sug­gest falling to your knees and thank­ing Den­mark’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art for pro­vid­ing you with an alter­na­tive. The week­ly videos on art, lit­er­a­ture, design and archi­tec­ture for its Louisiana Chan­nel are a gold­mine of inspi­ra­tion for non-main­stream types both young and old, but cer­tain seg­ments speak explic­it­ly to those just embark­ing on the jour­ney.

As any num­ber of us geezers can attest, Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne speak with author­i­ty. It’s okay if you’ve nev­er heard of them. If you were three or four decades fur­ther along, you would have.

(As to Mari­na Abramović, go easy on your par­ents if they need to spend a moment or two dial­ing her up on Wikipedia. I’ll bet Pat­ti or David would­n’t peer down their noses at some­one for not rec­og­niz­ing one of the world’s great­est liv­ing per­for­mance artists. Excuse the dan­gling prepo­si­tion, but she’s def­i­nite­ly some­one worth find­ing out about.)

I real­ize I don’t speak for most of Amer­i­ca, but for me, these guys loom larg­er than Jay‑Z and Bey­once com­bined. I also real­ize that in terms of both wealth and name recog­ni­tion, there’s a sta­ble full of teen celebri­ties who leave them in the dust.

Inter­est­ing how all three resist the notion of tal­ent as some­thing to be com­mod­i­fied.

Abramović, above, speaks of artis­tic explo­ration in lit­er­al terms. In her view dif­fi­cult work should be pur­sued with the brav­ery of 17th-cen­tu­ry sailors who sal­lied forth, believ­ing that the world was flat. I sus­pect she’s a tougher cook­ie than cast­ing direc­tor Tay­lor. Wit­ness her dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between gar­den vari­ety artists and great artists, the month long rub­bish bas­ket task she assigned her stu­dents, and the rig­or­ous­ness of her own prac­tice.

Her fel­low trail­blaz­er Smith has a more mater­nal touch. The path she pro­motes is sim­i­lar­ly twisty, low-pay­ing, and hard, but coun­ter­bal­anced with “the most beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences.”

Byrne tack­les some of the more prac­ti­cal aspects of com­mit­ting to the artis­tic way. To wit, there’s no shame in day jobs, even if it’s been eons since he was in a posi­tion to need one. He also makes some very valid points about tech­nol­o­gy, below, with nary a peep as to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of con­cen­trat­ing on one’s stud­ies when one is check­ing Twit­ter every two sec­onds. We all stand to ben­e­fit.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

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David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

in Creativity | May 12th, 2014

Where do great ideas come from? If you ask Neil Gaiman, he’ll tell you that they come from con­scious day­dream­ing and ask­ing the right ques­tions: What if you woke up with wings? What if your sis­ter turned into a mouse?

Pose that ques­tion to Rod Ser­ling, cre­ator of The Twi­light Zone, and he’ll tell you, very emphat­i­cal­ly, that “They come from the Earth… They’re in the air. And, to put them on paper, you bleed!”

Now run the same ques­tion by David Lynch, and you’ll get a dif­fer­ent answer: “An idea comes, and you see it, and you hear it, and you know it.” “It comes, like, on a TV in your mind.”  That’s how Lynch summed things up in late April, while speak­ing at the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music (BAM) with mas­ter inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber. Clos­ing his eyes, con­cen­trat­ing, Lynch elab­o­rat­ed, explain­ing that the big ideas start small. You start with just a frag­ment of an idea, and that frag­ment becomes “bait” that attracts oth­er frag­ments, and then more more frag­ments. And, before too long, you have an entire script. Or a paint­ing. If you want to delve fur­ther into Lynch’s cre­ative process, see our relat­ed post: David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

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James Franco Reads 6 Short Poems from His New Collection

in Creativity, Film, Poetry | May 5th, 2014

James Fran­co, like Ethan Hawke before him, is one of those movie stars who gets bashed left and right for dar­ing to behave like any oth­er arty young man. How dare he think he can write a nov­el, or paint, or make short films? What a pre­ten­tious idiot, right?!

I would counter that these activ­i­ties out him as a pas­sion­ate read­er who cares deeply about art and movies.

His celebri­ty opens doors that are barred to your aver­age arty young men, but it also ensures that he’ll be scape­goat­ed with­out mer­cy. (An arty young man of my acquain­tance earned some nice pub­lic­i­ty for him­self per­form­ing a one-man show titled “Bring Me the Head of James Fran­co, That I May Pre­pare a Savory Goulash in the Nar­row and Mis­shapen Pot of His Skull.” )

I rarely feel sor­ry for celebs who tweet their wound­ed feel­ings, but I was rather moved by Franco’s poet­ic take on what it’s like to be on the receiv­ing end of all this vit­ri­ol. It’s the first of six poems he reads in the video above, when he shared the stage with his 74-year-old men­tor Frank Bidart, who no doubt enjoyed per­form­ing to a sold out crowd of 800. Franco’s debut poet­ry collection’s title, Direct­ing Her­bert White owes some­thing to Bidart. His poem, “Her­bert White,” is the inspi­ra­tion for a short film direct­ed by Fran­co.

Those who would con­sid­er all that just more evi­dence of Franco’s insup­port­able pre­ten­tious­ness should con­sid­er the oppos­ing view­point, cour­tesy of non-movie star poet Bidart, who told the Chica­go Tri­bune:

 “I’m almost 75. At some point you know the para­me­ters of your life. The ter­ri­fy­ing thing about get­ting old­er is the feel­ing that every­thing that hap­pens from now on will be a species of some­thing that has already hap­pened. Becom­ing friends with James changed that: I no longer feel I can antic­i­pate the future. Which is lib­er­at­ing.”

Per­haps all that fran­tic, cross-media cre­ative expres­sion can result in some­thing more than a snarky one-man show.

Because

Because I played a knight,
And I was on a screen,
Because I made a mil­lion dol­lars,
Because I was hand­some,
Because I had a nice car,
A bunch of girls seemed to like me.

But I nev­er met those girls,
I only heard about them.
The only peo­ple I saw were the ones who hat­ed me,
And there were so many of those peo­ple.
It was easy to for­get about the peo­ple who I heard
Like me, and shit, they were all fuck­ing four­teen-year-olds.

And I holed up in my place and read my life away,
I watched a mil­lion movies, twice,
And I didn’t under­stand them any bet­ter.

But because I played a knight,
Because I was hand­some,

This was the life I made for myself.

Years lat­er, I decid­ed to look at what I had made,
And I watched myself in all the old movies, and I hat­ed that guy I saw.

But he’s the one who stayed after I died.

You can see James Fran­co and Frank Bidart’s Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val appear­ance in its entire­ty here. Find more poet­ry read­ings in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

Lis­ten to James Fran­co Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influ­en­tial Beat Nov­el, On the Road

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a  Freaks and Geek diehard who gets all her Lohan-relat­ed intel from the poet­ry of James Fran­co and  d‑listed. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

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