Round Robin

Round Robin

#1  The Unlucky Duck Finds His Love Unrequited

There once was a duck who had terrible luck

Until he met the girl of his dreams.

He did not realize that she was a hawk.

Nothing is quite as it seems.

#2  

Once carefree and lazy, a bundle of daisies

Uprooted for love, admiring our scent

He took his chances, but she spurned his advances

So into the garbage we went.

#3  Her

For as everyone knew, she was a rebel: a player: a man-eater.

The ghosts of her past boyfriends huddled in cages,

Their corpses lay strewn on the ground with open mouths;

Their redded lips the only dying roses on their graves.

All with their eyes exed out, but none quite as smeared as hers.

And yet she ate on, one doomed heart after another,

Until eventually they all knew they were ghosts before they started.

#4  

“I want to I want to!”

He kicked and he screamed.

What harm could one more do?

And I turned on the screen. 

Five minutes later I realized my blunder. 

Shame brought me down low 

As I looked on in wonder

At a ghost of the boy who was never told no.

#5  

A ghost.

Or is it a spirit.Is there a difference?Or are they the same?I don't know if I believe in ghosts.But I do know I see something.And it's coming my way.

Artist's Statement

                I loved this assignment.  The first night, I stayed up writing a plethora of tiny stories just for fun, much to the amusement of my roommates.  All of the tiny stories I wrote that first night were short, humorous, and a bit morbid in a strangely lighthearted way.  I realize now that that is also an eerily accurate description of me as a person.  I was a little surprised by the stories I received from my classmates, perhaps because somewhere deep down I expected their stories to be similar to mine.  That's a pretty stupid expectation, considering that we are vastly different people with different tastes and inclinations as artists and writers.

                 My favorite part of this project was every time that I received a tiny story from one of my classmates and exclaimed, "This is so good!"  It was fun to see and be proud of my classmates' and friends' work.  Even the stories that dealt with heavier subject matter were fun and exciting to read because, as was stated in the reading, "Whenever humanity tries to really grapple with the deep issues... it becomes a game."  This project highlighted that truth really well.  I think this is a fantastic form to deliver heavy messages in because I suspect that most people at any given moment throughout their day would rather read 4 lines about destructive parenting than 4 pages.  Our messages might get through more clearly if we don't wear out our welcome with our audiences by going on and on about depressing subjects in a didactic manner.

                This project reminded me of Pinterest in a way.  I know, most people use it for the purposes of finding low calorie recipes and DIY projects involving mason jars, but the first 7 boards on my Pinterest are concepts for projects I either have directed/written or am currently preparing to direct/write.  http://www.pinterest.com/thelizardofoz/  Each image on those boards is a picture that a stranger created.  Someone else found that image inspiring for their own project, and someone else pinned it from them, and on and on it went until I found it and added it to my own series of images that it relates to in a way that none of the other people the image has gone through have probably thought of.  Like the collaborative series of tiny stories we created for this project, we all saw different connections and bits of inspiration in the stories created by one another.

                I have never been a big fan of group projects, but I enjoyed this one.  I feel like I really learned and benefited from sharing this train of thought with my classmates.