Damn this building for being so hard to find, thought well-dressed university student Ian Elsner as he slid gracefully off the bus and strode purposely into the O’Connell Center. No wonder I don’t swim here. He bypassed the line and went directly for the complementary trinkets and corporate-logo-festooned pens at the free stuff table, fondly thinking of his mother, who was raised in the economics of Eastern Block Communism.

The unwelcoming swimming pool shimmered below as he entered the main arena.

——–

From his perch on the second floor, the stranger tracked Ian’s solitary path across the packed showroom floor. He spoke into his radio: “”Subject is where we want him. The market is up.”

“Roger that,” came the crackled reply. “Permission granted to hedge your bets”

——–

Below, Ian surveyed the displays. As he passed the long line outside of Lehman Brothers’ booth, he reflected on the years past. This is like my Middle School Science Fair, he thought. He was right: the booths were more professional-looking and there were many more words like “synergy”, “competitive”, “solutions”, “industry-leading”, and “global corporation”, but the fresh-faced, well-dressed youths standing in front of poster boards bore uncanny similarities to their middle school counterparts.

But his thoughts quickly turned to the more pressing issue. Can I find synergy in a competitive internship, focusing on solutions for industry-leading global corporations?

——-

He was on the same level as Ian was. He chuckled softly to himself as his long, identifiably foreign fingers toyed with the switch-blade in his pocket. This should be easy.

——

Ian heard the voice calling his name and turned around.

“Hey, how’s it going?”, the caller asked, with the air of a friend.

“Oh, hey!” Ian had absolutely no idea who this was, but was determined not to let it show. This sort of thing had been happening more often since he started college. “Great to see you again!”

“Yeah it is. What have you been up to?”

“Oh, since we last met? Umm, not much. Keeping it real, you might say”, said Ian still straining his mind to make a connection. Perhaps we have class together? Did we meet at preview? “Some showcase, eh? Hey man, I should be going. Send me a Facebook message sometime, okay?” So I can figure out who the hell you are.

Wishing each other the best, they parted, Ian calling back for good measure, “take care” before speed walking into the booth for the Alabama Department of Transportation only to pretend he had done so intentionally.

——

“I’ve failed, master”, he sobbed trough the radio, preparing for self flagellation. “He just played it so cool – as if he always runs into people he does not recognize – and slipped away like a fish.”

But his master wasn’t listening. Earlier, he had just advised another accomplice to postpone a debate. To the stranger, he said: “Good news. I’ve just secured your spot as the villein in the next Dan Brown novel.”

——

Ian had just learned that there were over 11,000 bridges in Alabama’s Highway System, and also learned that he did not want to spend his life taking care of them. Intel was cold and AMD only politely looked over his résumé.

Again, thinking of his mother, he vowed to be persistent.

He finally got to Walt Disney’s Imagineering booth. He told the representative about his experience, his awards, his desire for change, his audacious hope.

“Actually, we’re looking for those interested in corporate management positions”.

Screw this, he thought. I’ll just write novels.

I am returning from a partly self-imposed, partly circumstantial hiatus. In this time, I toured the masterpieces of Paris and Rome, I reviled in the stillness of rural Eastern Europe, and I started my first semester of college.

Over the summer, I had planned to update my travels in the form of podcasts and blog entries, but my laptop (which acts as my sole broadcast platform) got stolen in a crowded train station. The trip turned into much more of a vacation without the pressures of creativity. I realized that much of my free time with my laptop was focused on production of some sort, and the theft allowed me to take a break and drink my life slowly and thoroughly.

Since I returned, brimming with new experiences, thoughts, and writings,  I redesigned and rebranded my studio – Orange Marble Studio became Cique Studios. The name change comes with a desire to create a unique identity, something that has not been done before. This idea textually presents itself in the new studio name: Cique (pronounced “seek”) does not mean anything, allowing me to bring my own meaning to the word.

But the idea of bringing a unique meaning must extend beyond the branding. I feel as if a studio (or any organization) functions best by doing something fundamentally different then others.

The problem is Cique Studios does not do anything fundamentally different. In many ways it is unique: it utilizes open source to the fullest, distributes content online for free, and is, so far, simply an extension of one person. None of these factors necessarily lend themselves to better movies.

Better movies is the ultimate goal, and of course there is no systematic way to achieve this. But I hope that the next few years I will discover a unique niche where I can truly bring something new and exciting.