Articles written by: Jim Merod

Dying While Black
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

Dying While Black

(Mourning Breonna Taylor’s Demise) Life’s sacred trust shatters, night’s peace extinguished, vitality’s hope destroyed: error blameless, intolerance swarming dereliction’s hatred, each time and place like every place and time vacancy’s insidious bloat slaughters life, devastation’s purpose fulfilled, human love wasted, sentient feeling stilled, power’s grotesque fantasy, self-appointed horror snuffing what […]

Image Credit: Henry Taylor, Rock It, (2008). 5 cardboard boxes (premium malt boxes), acrylic on foam mannequin head, wood) 36" x 12" x 80 1/2". © Henry Taylor
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

The Danger of Cheer’s Resolve

Ruckus squawking overhead, each moment seagulls grousing as if the world were theirs. Somewhat out of sorts, a casual form slogs along the strand gazing at sky’s noise, a forceful finger lifted to the din, his gruff deliberate bark snarling BASTA! Awkward, slightly corpulent, no longer quickly springing up to […]

Image Credit: Arthur Jafa, Micah, 2017, (2004), Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome
Arts & Culture / The Reading Room / Vol. 2 No. 1-2

Sufficient Knowledge

Look carefully, describe what you see. Choose a landscape provoking interest. Mull that carefully again and again. Concoct an assumption: what       have you pursued, how does it work? Gather evidence, examine its relevance. Calibrate each fragment’s adequacy. Dissatisfied, pursue a new assumption. If clarity seems possible, push […]

Reassessment
Arts & Culture / Politics / The Stage / Vol. 1 No. 3-4

Reassessment

Take a leisure look back where it all was, the gapers and blozers, haggling whack offs standing on the platform waving so long as your train rolled past, carnival mayhem’s stale moments given to eternity. Grackles quarreling on roof tops banter much more eloquent than such nincompoops swilling malt beer […]

At Shakespeare’s Bed
Arts & Culture / The Reading Room / Vol. 1 No. 2

At Shakespeare’s Bed

Among the rubble of our wounded nation the vibrant image of a lyric warrior haunts my fragile solitude, the canopy above his sleep after long years’ scribbling blank as silent centuries since departed. Plays and poems do not heal politics. A writer’s skyward reach, earthly guesswork’s intuition, gathers straw and […]

Styles of Democracy
Convergence / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 2

Styles of Democracy

Increasingly, since the Supreme Court some thirty-plus years ago ruled to allow unlimited funding by private and corporate interests, the United States has steadily moved toward political degeneration and corrupting abuse of democracy’s frameworks. This issue stands at the forefront of any discussion regarding democracy’s present and future reality. I […]

Freedom’s Changing Shape
Business / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 1

Freedom’s Changing Shape

The geopolitical maelstrom’s now broadening danger derives from multiple goads toward isolated self-interest’s entrenched confusion. Fanatical simplifications emerge in response. When heightened political anxiety and jingoistic aggression polarize public discourse, nuance gives way to verbal reductions, petrified options, and emotional mania. Trump’s backdoor entry to the White House exacerbated already-extant […]

Future Grotesque
Business / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 1

Future Grotesque

Time’s solemn ache traverses freedom, drunk clowns and thugs seek obliteration. History ends, exculpation starts. Privacy sequestered in virtual weeds, conformity’s patriotic terror, ballooning misery narcotized once more again, always. Exculpatory explication’s naked hope, emboldened pleas, flounder: one by one . . . moon rising, the spirit quelled succumbs.