Ok, i woke up thinking about this first project a few mornings ago with this idea in my head. Have at it:
One of the finest memories of mine was being hauled through South Dakota. It was my first excursion to escape the suburbs. There was grass covering every surface of the ground. Immensely tall grass... I don’t know what it’s called... it’s pretty. It seemed to prance in place with the terrible winds yet it glowed a stern orange with the lowering sun. It was still hot from that summer day. Just... dry... hot... the road was dirt and dust was creeping into my metal pores. The land was such a great expanse of adventure awaiting discovery.
I was being hauled by a ford... some kind of Ford truck. I don’t know the exact model number or designation and I apologize. The only human equivalent to this forced ignorance of mine that I can think of is... knowing too much about your boss. It’s like, yeah, I’ll follow you around and do what you tell me to do but I don’t really need to know the size of your crankshaft.
So there we were, Ford and me, rolling over the dusty prairie. I was abound in dusty rapture. Ford had traveled and was a bit nonchalant about the whole thing, but I was enchanted. Here was a landscape untouched by the hands that birthed me. I was conquering by association. By forced experience I was gaining culture and character from an ignorant pilot lost in his enthusiasm for escape. His blindness to my awareness was as exhilarating as the land we tromped.
Unexpected tack. I like the unexpected. And I like your tack. Reply to follow this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to hold off on comments for likely a long while. I want to really explore the improvisational potential here of responding. I just looked up the wiki (ack) entry for improvisational theater and it has a section just as I had hoped:
In order for an improvised scene to be successful, the improvisers involved must work together responsively to define the parameters and action of the scene, in a process of co-creation. With each spoken word or action in the scene, an improviser makes an offer, meaning that he or she defines some element of the reality of the scene. This might include giving another character a name, identifying a relationship, location, or using mime to define the physical environment. These activities are also known as endowment. It is the responsibility of the other improvisers to accept the offers that their fellow performers make; to not do so is known as blocking, negation, or denial, which usually prevents the scene from developing. Some performers may deliberately block (or otherwise break out of character) for comedic effect -- this is known as gagging -- but this generally prevents the scene from advancing and is frowned upon by many improvisers. Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one, considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique. Every new piece of information added helps the improvisers to refine their characters and progress the action of the scene.