Selma,
Selma, asks, what is life like with the experience of manic-depression? The project’s main focus is the performance-manuscript, told as a series of ethnographer’s field notes. Part of the text documents a journey to Johns Hopkins University hospital to meet with Kay Redfield Jameson, a leading researcher of the illness, and Selma, uses Jameson’s own memoir on the diagnosis as its ethnographer’s starting point. As part of a show at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Hollywood I hosted a Dust Jacket Signing for the work, as Selma Avenue, a backstreet of Hollywood Boulevard and adjacent to the gallery, is a character in the text. The event aimed to point to the disappearance of independent booksellers on the Boulevard. Excerpts from Selma, have been published in PoetrySz and the 30<30 Anthology of Innovative Fiction (Starcherone Press, 2011). I have read excerpts from Selma, at a number of venues including the West Hollywood Book Fair, The Smell, Beyond Baroque, and BetaLevel in Los Angeles.
From the 30 Under 30: Anthology of Innovative Fiction reading at the Center for Fiction, New York, September 13, 2011.
Selma, Dust Jacket, ed. of 100, 2007
[LISTEN TO ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM SELMA, , 4:25min]
Event Poster
Excerpt:
March 17, 2007
Selma Avenue, Hollywood, California
She wasn’t going to be here like this, in this Spotlight
Bar her from me, Oh yeah, It’s good like that, but
It’s going to cost twenty-three with tax, just right
now, Hey, We should have packed it like this, bud
Yes, mame, next street, the same, Which one?
No, not til 5:30, not til making it back can we admit
that when you’re inspired you gotta find the good
The Piano Bar where you can avoid fighting a fit
The YMCA is where she went, well, that’s what
They say when she asks, Can I speak to E3?
Because what’s up, What up man is another thing
To go to Selma Ave School 6611 for training…
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