Unfinished Projects

It’s been a long week here at the bed, on account of my sweet’n'low being gone t’visit her family. But you see now that me’n'my buffs didn’t just chew our cuds. I think the big fella went’n'left for work, so it won’t worry’m for us to be borrow’n the cam’ra… y algunas cervezas también.

Now I just upload this here post and stumble off to chew some grass, so that th’big fella won’t smell the vino on m’breath. For our brother who wrangled hi’self along on the road with th’sugar-mistress, we got a big s’prise for you waitin’…

I was born knowing exactly two words. This is unusual for babies, who generally awaken for the first time with no knowledge and only instinct. Of course, the way that I knew these words then is not the same as the way we know words now, with spellings and pronunciation. Back then, for instance, I had no idea that those two words were both nouns, because I didn’t know what a noun was.

One of the words is ‘beginning’. Perhaps this makes sense because the time of birth is a true beginning. Throughout our lives we discern other beginnings, such as the first day of school or the start of a new year. People wake up on January first with resolutions and the hope of a fresh start. But really, the seasons are cyclical. How can there be a start to anything that goes around in a circle? I think that birth is our only beginning.

The other word that I knew at birth is ‘cave’. You might think that the symbolism of this is easy to understand as well. Isn’t it part of the theories of Freud that, once we are born, we want only to return to the safety and comfort of our mother’s womb? That being pushed out into the world, naked, is a singular trauma from which we never recover? Well, that was not the case with me. I am quite sure that, at the time of my birth, I was perfectly ready to leave the enclosure of my mother’s belly. I can present, as further evidence, the fact that her labor was quite short, though rather intense. Once it began, I came out almost immediately. I found this out when I asked her about my birth one day in the car while she was taking me to school. My mother thought that it was strange for me to ask such a question (I was seven years old at the time) but she was able to easily supply all the accurate details. I suppose that childbirth is not the sort of thing one forgets. I am sure that her recollection is still as clear now as it was that morning in the car.

Because of my eagerness to leave the womb, I know that it wasn’t the cave which I knew from birth. When your entire knowledge consists of only two concepts, it would be a waste to devote one of them to the thing which youi are leaving behind, or fleeing. The conceptual cave which existed in my infant brain was deep in the ground. It was something that had to be reached by digging, or, better yet, by simply slipping down the natural crevices, along the striations of underground geological features, and even passing through the small spaces that exist between grains of dirt.

The links joining the chains of this swing to its wooden crossbar creaked slightly as my foot traced out loopy shapes. My vision focused on the buckle of my shoe, just above the toe which was burrowing through gray pebbles. The afternoon shade was silent but I looked up and took in the full expanse of the playlot. Within the rectangle defined by boundary boards were so many identical stones that their cumulative number, all summed up, surely exceeded any value which might be relevant, encountered in my day-to-day life. But the whole lot had been put up just last week. The uncountable stones were just a few hours work for a truck, three men, and shovels.

With a rattle, I slid forward off the seat and stood. Turning, I ran between two adjacent swings, brushing fingers of each hand across their chains, still slightly greased. Down the hill and towards the cooler shadows of the creek, I disappeared, leaving behind a collage etched temporarily on the ground: two shoe-sized craters blasted across a swaying network of canyons.

Jenn and I went and saw Modest Mouse in concert last night. It was at the Auditorium Theater at Roosevelt University, which is a big multi-balconied affair. I think that we were six floors up from the stage actually.

Anyway, Modest Mouse are working through their set, after an extremely forgettable opening band, and they strike up this one song with a pretty sweet disco beat. Somehow this triggers in my mind the vision of a big choreographed dance number that follows the ebbs and flows of the song (well, there were a couple of times where I expected a swell and the band slowed down instead, but my mental image was able to catch up). After that point, every song they played fell like a puzzle piece into the outline of a totally rad musical. There were a couple of tunes that needed to be gently forced into place, but, on the other hand, there were others that just perfectly slipped into the developing story structure. When I got home, I grabbed my notebook and wrote as much down as possible so as not to forget. Also Jenn now thinks that I’m a total head-case.

Here are the scenes, in order for the musical. Each scene corresponds to a song I heard last night, but they weren’t played in this order.

1. Our hero wakes up in his modest, working-class home. He goes downstairs to have breakfast with his loving family. This scene establishes that the hero is really a good kid despite his tough exterior (Jenn suggested that he’s like Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World). At the end of the song is a quiet, introspective bit when our hero takes out the garbage.
2. Now dressed as a street tough, our hero heads out with his buddies. I actually envisioned this dance number as ballet / modern dance, moving through the alleys and backyards of the town.
3. Meanwhile, in his underground lair, the villain reveals his nefarious plot. He is a bit cartoonish, dressed in red and black, and he possibly is wearing a cape. This is a solo dance (his henchmen don’t show up until later) but there are choreographed swarms of bats from the special effects department.
4. This is the big disco scene that started this whole process rolling. The true love of our hero and his friends is dancing at their disco club (hence saturday night fever in the post title). While it’s mostly a big group dance, there was definitely a section in the song where our hero and his partner take center stage, showing that he is definitely the leader in his crew. Unfortunately, his partner doesn’t really show up anywhere else because Modest Mouse don’t really have any love songs.
5. This is the most dramatic scene of the musical (yeah, the ending is a bit of an anti-climax). As the dancers are closing up and leaving the disco, the villain and his bumbling henchmen arrive. Our hero has an opportunity to catch them sneaking around, but he shrugs off the noises he hears and goes home to bed. After breaking into the disco, the villain briefly loses control of himself, becoming enraged, smashing the bar and breaking records over his knee. As the song finishes, the scene alternates between the villain preparing to blow up the disco and our hero sleeping restlessly. This builds to a climax with the hero tossing, turning, and moaning. At the last minute, he wakes up sweaty, wondering if it was a dream. Looking out the bedroom window, he sees flames rising from across town.
6. Racing back to the disco, our hero finds only a still smoldering ruin. The next song follows him as he staggers through the streets, alternately angry and in despair. We also see the villain gloating in victory as the hero laments that he is not strong enough to get revenge.
7. After collapsing in the gutter, our hero is revived by his friends and dance partners. They encourage him and tell him that he needs to stand up to the villain because he is their only hope.
8. An old wise man emerges from the crowd of disco kids (perhaps he is one of their grandparents?). The wise man takes our hero back to his warehouse and puts him through the stereotypical action movie training scene. The wise man is clearly a bit crazy and enjoys expounding on his personal philosophy.
9. The fight scene!! Compared to some of the darker tones from earlier in the story, this is fairly light and somewhat cartoonish. A fluffy superhero type fight would work well here, rather than anything more realistic and graphic. Our hero triumphs, of course. After the start of the fight, the outcome isn’t really ever in doubt.
10. Closing credits. This is a cop-out, but it was the only place that I could figure ‘Float On’ to fit in.

So yeah, that’s the whole thing. It’s obviously pretty derivative, but the whole point was to try to take the songs as they were coming at me and squeeze them into a fairly generic plot framework. That I got a disco in there was just a bonus. There are definitely some weaknesses though. The song for the final fight just didn’t have very much dramatic back and forth. It is pretty clear from the first few bars that the hero is going to triumph. Also, as I mentioned above, there really was no opportunity to introduce a love interest.

And just to stoke any fears for my sanity out there, I’ll mention that this is definitely not the first time that a series of songs has triggered an elaborate narrative in my head. I still have detailed memories of the much-darker-than-Fantasia animated story that could accompany the whole Pink Floyd album ‘Wish You Were Here’. Maybe I’ll save that one for some other time…