Dan Conley’s Writing Projects

I have been thinking a lot lately about the division and violence in this country and how much it relates to mental health. And then I remembered this quote from Montaigne’s essay “On Virtue:” Except for order, moderation, and constancy, I believe that all things are possible for a

I will try to put aside my disappointments about this episode for today’s essay and accept it for what it is. I think, on some level, the two Kyrzsztofs who wrote this episode — Kieslowkski and Pietsiewicz — fell in love with a character they created. That isn’t such a

My first major job after college was working for an organization called the Computer & Communications Industry Association in Washington. It was basically a policy and advocacy group for computer and regional telephone companies that lobbied for policies that would promote the confluence of computers with phones. Back in the

Here’s where episode 8 — the second lowest rated episode in the Dekalog, according to IMDB raters — starts to go off the rails. Recall that as the last segment was coming to an end, there were still many unresolved questions between Zofia and Elżbieta. But it ended on an optimistic

I made the mistake a couple months ago of giving one of my essays too evocative a title. I wrote something about the endless Jeffrey Epstein talk and the ways we turn the abuse of girls into entertainment in a piece I called “Nonstop Creepiness.” It’s no longer on

I know that I keep saying how this episode turns out to be a disappointment, but then I note how well done the particular segment is — and the same story applies here. We might expect what just happened to lead to an immediate confrontation. But first we see Elżbieta sitting