a man named Savory La Fontaine
walked down the streets of Chicago
and heard his name on a stranger’s lips

a stream of lace trailed from his hat
and swished nicely over his shoulder
when he turned to wave

this was a man comfortable with
eyeliner who liked books on the history
of French lingerie

his mother had named him Steve not Savory
and he’d graduated from Northwestern
with a political science degree

but if he’d said to that man
hey do you want to be in my glam rock band
the man would have said yes

two continents away his name
was Savory La Makhmalbaf and everybody
wanted to be in his next film

12/20/2003

Author's Note: The film Close-Up, directed by Kiarostami, is a doc-style movie about the trial of a real-life man who impersonated director Makhmalbaf and convinced a family that he wanted to shoot his next film about him. We have so much fascination with being what we're not-- or changing what we're not into what we can pretend to be. We just need the world to go along with it.

Posted on 12/21/2003
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