journal entry #5: "just friends. inception."

this story is fiction.

today we kissed. so what, i’ve kissed hella women. i kissed that random white girl outside of the gig that one time. i’m not saying i’ll kiss anyone but i’m saying kissing in this context doesn’t mean much but i feel as if... we made out like teenagers. the adolescent tongue fight lasted for not long enough. i want more but i’m content. i know you feel me. 

 

i should talk it over with the homies. 

                             

                                                                         homies. 

                      what’s good with you and shorty? you still fuck with ha?” 

                                                                             me. 

                                                i mean we cool. we just friends.

 

just friends, i know we’re just friends but we kissed. i know you felt, something. maybe it’s me that feels something. roll up. yeah i feel something. this backwood stale but its decent. you decent. you so decent. your skin is fine like skin of an african queen bathing in her private quarters after a boring night of red wine and laughing at another nigga’s corny jokes. i’m zooted. your peach was cultivated in chicago not atlanta. but that can’t be it. 

 

your beauty (ain’t) the reason i’m tweakin’, it can’t be. nah. but i remember the first time i saw you. roll another one. it was like in "bronx tale" when colagero first saw jane. "i only have eyes for youuuuu." life was moving in slow motion. my world was small then but i already knew there wasn’t a woman on the planet like you. i felt it then and i feel it now. i haven’t been to every country in every continent but i know. i know that you're one of a kind but so am i, so am i. so am. so. s.

 

i moonwalked across the chicago river to the uber that i fetched for you, for us. fireworks blast at navy pier as we ride on the michigan avenue bridge. tonight feels special and damn i'm happy to be here with you. when you look in my in my eyes you know that i’m different. i’ve been crafted by God just for you. my touch is different than his. my touch is different than his. 

now i’m on the beach with white linen, og mode, with my toes out enjoying the water wash over my feet. i’m thirsty but not for the sangria in my canteen. the water at the crib and i don’t wanna walk. that night is long gone and i hate beaches.

 

i’m up. 

 

remember the time? remember that time i came through on the sneak. i didn’t even expect me to be there. your eyes lit up like navy pier when you saw me. that look on your face, i could save it forever. not alzheimer’s or old timers. my memory is long and so is..i could never forget. i always feed off your energy. 

 

i wish i could tell you about my dreams. you're even a star there and i wouldn't want it any other way. roll up. i'm trippin. i always remember you in my dreams but it’s the details; what you wear but i see that face, and that smile.  i ‘wanna’ remember all the details of the (dream) world that i built for you, for us. inception. that's my ego talking.

 

i brought you flowers and it wasn’t your birthday. somehow all of your friends are here. i must've invited them because i knew that would make you happy. i don't know where we are so let's say i built this place just for us. you hate surprises but this time you loved it. i smile hard because i'm unafraid. i want them to see us too. i’ve been working on this magic trick, i must have, because i pulled a diamond from behind my back. “no,” she said. “you can’t own me.” “i love you.” i said. you believe me.

 

i’m up. 

 

your’re right, i can’t. 

dream girl, the love i have for you is my burden to carry, not yours. in this world i still love you and i know you love me, so whatever zone this is, its ok. the seats aren't comfy and the walls could use new paint but its "iight." in my dreams i’ll show you the ways that i love you but here, here, i can only be your friend. your friend is what i’ll be because that’s what you need me to be, but more importantly, that's what you want me to be. just friends.

journal entry #4: i don’t know what i’m doing.

i started this site on accident. i knew that i wanted it to happen but i didn’t know when. i had the idea and i’d talk about it with friends but i didn’t plan on launching it for a while. i was just so frustrated with being stagnant. i hate when i’m in between projects. 

i planned on shooting a short film at the end of september but those plans are in jeopardy. it’s really tough getting a group of strangers to buy into an idea that wasn’t their own. there isn’t the same type of ownership. i met with homie shelby and my brother to make happen but as time passed things grew more and more complicated. i still want to film but i want to do it correctly. productions are expensive and i’m not trying to play myself or waste other people’s time. maybe tomorrow i can let you read the script.  

anyway while i was figuring out how i was going to pull this production off i was spending a lot of time bullshitting on youtube or binge watching tv shows. drake dropped scorpion and i had to talk about it. i didn’t have a podcast or a blog but i had something to say. i wrote 2500 words about drake growing from a startup to a corporation. i sent it to my friends. a couple of friends suggested i submitted it to blavity. blavity posted it the next day. it felt amazing seeing my writing published. i submitted 5000 words on baltimore and “the wire” . again, it was accepted and posted the next day. 

things were great but they kept changing my article titles and killing all intrigue, in my opinion. i submitted my next article to made magazine. an editor from the magazine contacted me for my instagram handle. it was “woneywill” at the time. the name had a cool meaning but no one would know it was me. i wanted my new name to be associated with my site but i didn’t have a site. i designed my site on squarespace, bought the domain and changed my instagram name to “merchkels”. i didn’t realize that my site was live as soon as i bought the domain. i sent the live link to my site to my friends. they liked it. so what was i afraid of? 

i was afraid people would read my writing and hate it. no more mystery about what i do and how i do it. it’s out there for all to see. i was also afraid because lately God had blessed me with everything i’ve wanted. if i work my ass off and give everything within me, i can accomplish anything. the pressure is on me to execute now. no more excuses, no more waiting, no more pointing at other people, it’s on me. so i really don’t know what i’m doing. i’m just doing what feels right and everything else will come.   

"excuse the dirty mirror." 10 ways social media has made us weird.

i’ve been on social media for a long time and its funny the way people communicate. everyone is on their own reality tv show worthy of views and likes. these are some things that i find funny on social media. if you feel like this is a personal attack, its not. i’m guilty of some of this too.

1. “excuse the dirty mirror.” 

this doesn’t exclusively apply to dirty mirrors. it can be any minor detail the person posting a picture points to in order to avoid ridicule. for example, if i took a picture a great picture in my room but  a rogue pair a boxers are posted in the background, i can still post it. i just have to tell you “excuse the pair of rogue boxers” and all is forgiven. the veteran social media users know how much people talk shit. users of “excuse the…” probably talk the most shit and they know someone somewhere is “flaming” their picture. 

 

2. bad editing. 

i really don’t understand why internet skit makers and self shooters don’t utilize editing. if the skit involves people walking but instead they are standing still waiting for the cue from the camera man, why not just edit that part out? i like when people set up a camera for a twerk video or a workout video and the first few seconds is them propping their phone up on the floor. its a real “see the sausage get made” moment.  screen recorders, i’m coming for you next.

 

3. lost file photos. 

were the photos ever lost though? “lost photos from vacation.” its not like the vacation photos were stored in an old cardboard box tucked in a crawlspace. the vacation polaroids didn’t mixed up with the ones from the family reunion. the photos were in your phone, where you left them. just be real and make the caption, “ i’ve been waiting a long ass time to post this picture.” we all save photos but there’s a rare 1% that loses them. 

4. who remember this song?

remember old twitter when we’d post what we were listening to and wait for someone to say,”damn g i completely forgot about that song.” those days are long gone. thirst and streaming services put an end to that. these days someone might post a snippet of “tip drill” and ask “who remembers this?” we all do. 

5. does anyone know? 

i love when people ask their respective social media friends questions they could ask google. from troubleshooting devices to restaurant suggestions, people ask strangers for suggestions. you have your friend’s numbers so strangers are your target audience. why not google or yelp? you could just phone a friend and leave us out of it. 

 

6. joke theft. 

joke theft is at an all time high. i could see a funny tweet and laugh. the next two times i see that joke on twitter i may chuckle, but after the 28th time from the 28th different person the joke has lost its funny. i really dislike when black twitter has a running inside joke and then some non colored gentrifies the joke and it ends up on ellen or some shit the next day. salute to the black twitter forefathers who have been about these jokes since old twitter was poppin’.

7. “you can do it too”

there are a lot of motivational speakers on social media. my favorite line is when people claim to use internet flexing as a means of “showing the kids a better way.” say man, don’t nobody care. the kids definitely don’t care if you aren’t breaking bread. i’m no more motivated seeing you post a selfie in your car than the first time you posted it. how narcissistic of you to assume that whatever you post is so enlightening that it would motivate me to do anything? “we all got the same 24 hours” but we don’t all have the same circumstances. there should be a net worth qualification before you start giving ted talks on instagram.   

 

8. “the best in the world.”

everyone believes that they have the best spouse, parent, or child. why do they have to be the best? before social media, we could just make claims without them being tested. is there some sort of standardized scoring system that allows us to asses the quality of said person. look up “great” in a thesaurus and go with that. maybe there should be a competition or a dual. wait it should be an american gladiator style competition where we battle to the death to finally learn who’s mom is really the best!

9. “let’s argue”

let’s not argue, man.  i was so fed up with internet arguments, i started a website to say whatever i wanted. the weird thing is that some people like to argue. i hate when i do fall into internet arguments because i always regret it in the end. i hate when i get riled up about stuff i don’t really care about. the basketball season will be here soon, don’t get dragged into facebook debates. 

10. facebook. 

throw the whole shit away. 

chantal akerman/jeanne dielmann: before her time.


Storytelling is where life experience and narrative technique meet. Compelling characters are just important, if not more, as narrative structure. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels focuses on character development as a part of the narrative structure itself. The story is being told through one woman’s experiences, Jeanne Dielman. The story goes as the audience learn more about Jeanen Dielman. Chantal Akerman wrote and directed Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. This film was influenced by Akerman’s life growing up but also shows her technique as an auteur. In an interview she said that cinema is about time and space. In Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, Akerman uses time to hold the tension. Unnecessary cuts would have distracted audience from viewing their subject. She manipulates the space around Jeanne Dielman to depict confinement. Jeanne Dielman is confined to motherhood, domesticity, and literally her apartment.

Parenthood is one of the few careers that last a lifetime. There aren’t two week notices or resignation letters, maybe a random fax like the one Pat Reilly sent days before taking a job as a head coach for the Miami Heat. The point is once a person signs up to be a parent he/she have to stay one even if you decided to be a parent as a young woman looking to escape her war ravaged home. At the end of the first day we watch Jean, she and her son, Sylvain, have an awkward conversation about the birds and the bees. In this conversation, Sylvain was curious about his mother’s marriage to his father. She explained when she met his father and when she decided to

marry him. She married his father because the war had just ended and money was hard to come by. Her family thought it best to marry a wealthy man she had met. She obliged. For her, marriage was a business decision that would give her financial security. Money doesn’t buy love, on its own but it can keep a marriage together. I would love to go off on a tangent about the business of marriage but Jeanne Dielman’s story is enough. She was all in on marriage and ended up with a child we aren’t sure she ever wanted.

The audience meets Mrs. Dielman at a point in her life where she’d been a mother longer than she’d been a wife. She still does everything for her son, who is between an adolescent and a young adult. From cooking all of his meals to polishing his shoes in the morning, she completes most of her motherly tasks in the kitchen. Akerman and her cinematographer, Babette Mangote, used frame within a frame to show how she was stuck in a life of domesticity and motherhood. In the kitchen, she often stood in her doorway while she cooked. The kitchen seems small and crammed. As we watch her violently polish her son’s shoes in Day 3 her actions show her growing frustration with her life.

Mrs. Dielman doesn’t have friends. That might be a little presumptuous but we never see her talk to anyone about herself other than her son. She’ll share a quick response about the status of her day or the well-being of her son but she doesn’t have anyone that can help her shoulder a heavy emotional load. We only see her outside in order to run errands. Errands are the ugly brother of housework. Errands don’t get completed at home but they might as well be. Jeanne goes grocery shopping which is a domestic chore or one performed daily when you have to feed two people instead of one. Her life revolved around doing what others thought she should do and she was sick of it.

As children we all played the staring game because its a challenge for kids to sit still. Parents’ favorite game may be the quiet game when someone just needs quiet. As the audience, we were engaged in a staring contest/quiet game with this film. It was a test of will. The audience was rewarded important information about Jeanne Dielman. We watch her bathe, cook meals, and shine shoes all without time jumps. She fully completes each task. The most significant use of time is when Jeanne Dielman is sitting in her living room chair on Day 3. She sits in a chair and we watch her for a couple minutes. Screen time turns real time into an eternity. Theres internal dialogue within Jeanne Dielman and the audience. “What is she doing? Wait is she just sitting there? She doesn’t look okay. She isn’t ok.” She sat there exhausted, in her mind searching for another mindless task to complete.

Jeanne Dielman’s apartment was nicely decorated but felt like the place where Mrs. Dielman was serving time under house arrest. She only left to complete errands and that one time she and her son took a walk. Chantal Akerman used framing to show her confined to her life and her apartment. Akerman didn’t use closeups but framed her instead. When Jeanne Dielman cooks she is framed within a door which framed by the wall. The composition shows how much space is limited. She is confined to the role of personal chef for her son. She is often framed by something in the background like a China cabinet. In the end when she was struggling in bed with a “john”, she is confined by the space on the bed. She is literally trapped by the man and by the way the shot is framed. Maybe she thinks she will be confined to the career of a sex-worker.

There are dozens of cliches about living with less than perfect circumstances. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” “Its not about the fall, its about how you get up.” Cliches are great but aren’t always applicable to the real world. Jeanne Dielman was a woman without agency. Her circumstances weren't of her own doing so she did her best to deal with it by not dealing with it. Mrs. Dielman was a hamster on a wheel and destined to die in her apartment alone, unless her son still needed to polish his shoes. Cliches couldn’t help Jeanne Dielman. There isn’t a handbook for the oppressed or disenfranchised. There’s only a pat on the back and a “good luck”.