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An extract from "II" a forthcoming work of fiction on mental illness as emancipation

a moody atmospheric photo of a digital display on a bus stop
Photo © Michael Salu
Mostly set over the course of a few days in 2014, in a state of unreality in an unnamed small town based on Ferguson during the protests surrounding the killing of Michael Brown, II tells the story of two young doppelgänger brothers – one of whom appears also to be navigating schizophrenia – grappling with a grief not yet fully understood.

II asks how we absorb grief as memory, grief that may not directly belong to us, but cultural hegemony will dictate how we might perpetually hold this grief anyway. Told in a noir-like cinematic sweep, II makes no claim to realism, nor magical realism, but attempts to glimpse the uncanny timbre of digital memory, and the many ways the language of movies structures perception, and geopolitical mythology. Informed by ‘slow cinema’ II is mostly told within the confines of rituals embedded in dominant modernist images and symbolism, drawing attention to their influence and granularity, while allowing the plot to drift along as ambience.
You can read more at Mercurius Magazine.
Sample of the extract from
Writing
Made on
Tilda