As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I’m a member of the American Marketing Association. This year, I entered the annual student case competition with a team from my school. The case involved McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a textbook publisher that’s trying to figure out how to enhance its presence on the web and make more sales directly to students.
My team met weekly, and I was able to put my knowledge of publishing to great use. We shaped a great concept for an online marketplace that would even allow McGraw-Hill to take advantage of used book buying and selling without incurring any inventory costs, and we backed it up with a campus consumer program to make sure the website would be well-used. I took our notes and wrote up the bulk of the proposal, made some corrections with the input from the team, handed it over to our team leader, and went on a cruise, promptly putting the case competition out of my mind.
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In 2002, I decided to come out of the closet… artistically speaking. I had always wanted to do some sort of crazy performance art, and walking around town as Taceo the Mime gave me a fun new creative outlet. This story was a natural extension of my experiences, and most of it is based on events that actually happened.
Because of the title and the theme, some people never seem to get past the surface and assume that I’m using this as an allegory to talk about a homosexual’s “coming out” experience. Being straight and happily married, I’ve never had to deal with such an experience, so I would have a hard time writing about it. No, what this story is really about is what happens when we find ourselves searching for a way to express whom we really, truly are and find that unique outlet that gives us a chance to finally speak up for ourselves. For me, mime was a passing fancy to pass the time, but for Tara in this story, it’s more of a spiritual awakening.
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This is one of my favorite stories that I’ve written, because it really speaks to the heart of the beliefs we cling to. I used to be a hardcore Christian, but I found myself dwelling more and more towards the outskirts of the faith as I dealt with small-minded people who were more concerned with telling others that they were going to hell than they were with helping those people out in their daily lives. It really bothered me.
Another thing that annoyed me was the insistence of these same Christians that the name “Jesus Christ” was the only name synonymous with the redemption of the soul. Truth be told, no one knows what the man we refer to as Jesus Christ actually called himself; the letter “J” didn’t even exist until the 9th century AD, and the Greek word “Iesus” is a translation of a Hebrew name. scholars believe he may have called himself “Yeshu” or “Yeshoua,” but the lack of sources outside the gospels make it hard to know what.
Both of those pet peeves played a heavy role in the creation of Elijah, who is very much like myself in the year 2001…
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This is a poem I wrote about a statue in Allerton Park, which is in Monticello, IL, when I really missed the point of what I now consider a great work of art. It’s called The Death of the Last Centaur, and it was sculpted by Antoine Bourdelle.
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Journal | SeanJJordan | 
January 24, 2008 2:47 am | 
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