Tag Archives: storytelling

Hands

Posted on July 17, 2018 by John Biscello

This is the text which inspired the story I performed in a Story Slam a couple of years back. The theme was “Risk.” Here’s a video clip of the presentation (sorry, it’s sideways, but then again, so am I). One … Continue reading →

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Scandinavia

Posted on June 14, 2018 by John Biscello

(Excerpt from Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale)   I am standing over myself: a runt-skinny kid lying flat on his stomach, right elbow hunched, the stubby pencil in his left hand ferociously scribbling on a piece of unlined white paper.  … Continue reading →

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In My Solitude

Posted on June 3, 2018 by John Biscello

It is, for me, as well as other writers of a certain breed, a familiar haunt and barbed echo, that fear of being found out and exposed as a fraud and imposter, some busted metaphor that won’t hold up under … Continue reading →

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Holden on the Rocks

Posted on January 21, 2018 by John Biscello

   After the first bar, my father and I slide over to another bar, a non-island-themed one where a DJ is spinning party-pop music. At this point my father is slumped over on his barstool. When the bartender asks him … Continue reading →

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Recording Live

Posted on January 19, 2018 by John Biscello

   I understand that I am not only with my father and grandfather and Marie as family, but also as a writer. I am sketching them. The mechanical hand in my mind that never stops is charting and sketching and … Continue reading →

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Reckoning

Posted on January 17, 2018 by John Biscello

I realized that there may never come a reckoning that equated to a clean or true do-over. And what was it I wanted to break from? Was it the past, was it a worn and outdated mode of self that … Continue reading →

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Feelism

Posted on January 15, 2018 by John Biscello

Feelism: emotional subjectivity filtered through the prism of Memory; story-seeds rooted in sensual Nostalgia. In my book, this is what happened has always taken a backseat to this is how it felt.

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Slant

Posted on January 15, 2018 by John Biscello

Emily Dickinson advised that we “tell it slant.” This makes sense. Telling it slant is a natural outgrowth of living it slant. Oblique paths and slanted paths dominate my sense of inner geography. Dylan Thomas wrote: “The memories of childhood … Continue reading →

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Monster

Posted on January 7, 2018 by John Biscello

Fiction is a monster. It demands, it consumes. It is a glutton. Enough is never enough. It won’t be satisfied until the unreal becomes utterly real, beyond real. Its sole desire is to usurp reality, to surpass it. It basks … Continue reading →

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Timewarp

Posted on December 29, 2017 by John Biscello

I tell myself stories in the dark, Anya. It helps. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it makes things worse. Or keeps everything the same. Which is a different kind of worse. It is scary once you realize that the past … Continue reading →

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