The Trickster Diaries/Chapter 42.9

Media Arts, another course in “The Program,” met once per week, at night, a mile off the main campus in a beautiful, paisley carpeted, burgundy upholstered and curtained, 250 seat theatre inside a new, multi-level structure called Arts & Entertainment Center.
We had one assignment for the entire semester: create an original, one minute or less, spoken word story. We would then present our stories, live, on stage, at the final class meeting, and our performances would be live-streamed on the college website to thousands.
Cool. Just my thing. I could create, write, speak, perform. But, as I learned, fitting anything inside that time frame wasn’t so easy.
The purpose? The professor never explained, but I assumed it had to do with film scenes, at least in the modern era, and especially on TV, rarely lasting beyond a minute in total length. The formula for screenplays, after all, was 120 pages, theoretically equaling 120 minutes, so…

Beyond that and beyond showing up, we students did absolutely nothing. Each week there was a guest speaker — usually an animated TV show exec — who controlled the hour, insisting that he or she hired artists, people with “creative vision,” not computer geeks. Then they’d open it up to questions. I always asked the same one:
“What are your three, all time favorite films?”
The answers, because of their remarkable consistency, were so surprising. Two of the three were always Euro Art House, and the third was always The Graduate.
A guy sitting in front of me, after the third or fourth time, noted this, and turned around: “I don’t know what you’re getting at here, but maybe it means these motherfuckers are human after all?”
“Hm. Yeah. Doubtful.”
We high fived. We later became good friends, me and John. But John had a curious problem, named Marigold, his girlfriend. Swear to god her name was Marigold. Marigold Leslie. How can you possibly fail at anything with a name like Marigold Leslie? She, too, was enrolled in the Media Arts course and sitting to his left that night, asleep.

During the final class meeting, Marigold was the very first to walk on stage, in front of the cameras, and perform. And her one minute story, which lasted three, was the parable of the snake, which, though obscure, was thousands of years old.
“What in the fuck, man,” I said, elbowing John.
“What can I say? She’s got style. Pretty sure that’s all that counts.”

Marigold exited stage right, to rapturous applause.