Idea for a portfolio piece: a short work, almost like a chant, all rhythm, mostly questions. Give it some form, but its function is to list everything I know, everything I’ve ever wanted to learn, everything I’ve ever asked myself. Give it a kind of chronology, make it also a story of coming-of-age. The questions compound. Start with writing Jack and the Beanstalk in kindergarten (first memory of inscription); then copying out Narnia; then writing stories and poems to express my sex- and power-fantasies. The poem I wrote about 9/11, “The Usurpers.” The Republic for my birthday, age 12. Musical father, visual mother. Both proletariat. Philosophy is the ultimate calling, and I studied it all on my own. Feel how it felt to be on the outside.