Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror

 

We’re standing behind you

The window is your mirror

We‘re filming your reflections

 

In the window

You can see

The teardrop on her cheek

The other tear — is in your hair

Reach up and wipe the tear

 

With your thumb

Roll the tear on your fingers

As if water — is on the wings

of a butterfly_

 

Now, your face is dry

You point and say something

Insignificant like

“See that gas station down there.”

 

Vignette for Love Divine.

 

Copyright © 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller

 

 

 

Update #5 — Soft Launch! Explode — The Writer’s Environment — Spring 2017 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!

 

Explode — The Writers Environment

 

Soft Launch!

 

Thank you Girl Band of STEMs.   You rock!

 

“Life is lived forward, but can only be understood backward.” Kierkegaard

Explode — is a platform for curated content in an interactive meta-environment.  The Environment facilitates content and other stories using digital media to redefine how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content.  Explode is not a ‘mule’ as one follower proffered, with too many components — in a dream too big to bring to fruition. Explode is a spacecraft – and this soft launch is focused on development, functionality, and adjustments before a wider release — that accommodates the Team’s good counsel and the Project Manager’s concerns: security, budget, data backup, thousands of lines of hard coding and tuning using three.js — the best candidate in a 3D environment; node.js for interactivity; an engine to loop data in response to commands; a requirement for different headsets to present the same effects in virtual space, labor demands — every part of the project divided into sub projects — interface, infrastructure, and content, and finally the project needs a whole project team (5-10 people) and technical professionals to build up the spacecraft in a hard launch for product development. This glib paraphrase, to the Girl Band of STEMs dismay — is necessary to protect what Explode want’s to be and how we get there – working backwards.

See prototypes linked below for the conceptual articulation and submergence of the ceiling, walls, and floor of the arcades, the arch, atrium, footprint, and oculus

designed for Explode – The Writers Environment!

 

Hard Launch Coming in 2018

 

E Maria Shelton Speller

Project Sponsor

 

Weiwei “Vivi”Huang

Interface Designer

 

 

Tejasvi Kandula

Programmer

 

Yingqian “Selina” Jiang

Project Manager

The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette

The [Dollhouse with the Red Corvette] is a lateral, vertical, linear, horizontal, and spherical art installation. It is a poesy puzzle for verse and graffiti, with sublime imagery. It functions like a mnemonic, a telltale pastiche for found poesy in a digital world. Some of the pieces fit, and some are misfits — that lead to other immersions… in this stained-glass heaven — this society in the machine…

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

Copyright © 2017-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.

Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved] 3.0

Overture:  Woodstock is an ensemble.  There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni” by JuseBeats!  

 

In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock

In his magnum opus

about a world… full of extras

in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her

 

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

He nods

 

I’m  thinking

Disappointed… in us!

[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]

 

Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo

Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour

People who think they are special

People who know they are not

People who wish they were

Impeccable

 

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

 

Whispers prologue

Guess what we did?

A Springboard!

A party of twenty

Three couples played before

winking and willing

shills playing in the round

Lovely trips on the Hill

in augmented VR

 

I’m thinking…

Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!

Barefoot bell bottomed hippies

Denim sweeping the ground

[Reserved]*

[Reserved]*

 

Revolutionary hair —  fists in the air

Dragging us back in the mud

Blunt antiquity

Move on Woodstock!

 

Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles

Bombs in black holes!

[Where did you go?]

 

We should be sunning in the Bahamas

chilling on hemp swings and

chairs swiveling in immersive environments

Higher than kite fights

A soaring for points experience

 

Get off the ride Woodstock!

You had your turn — at freedom

Thank you

 

Exit signs are easy to find — look

The dragon is in the window

Freedom is accessible

Wonder is a trip

with walk through assistants

Dreams of power and prizes

Optional…

 

Fall out and Jack into

a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock

in his magnum opus

about a world… full of extra

architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal

 

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

 

Whispers song

We don’t want to feel we’re high…

We just want to think we’re high

in Dubai

 

We don’t want to feel we’re high…

We just want to think we’re high

in Dubai

 

Copyright © 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.

 

 

*I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).  I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity.  I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood.  I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.

I could invite Poets to fill the empty bars for [Reserved][Reserved]

 

 

Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved]

 

Overture:  Woodstock is an ensemble.  There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”.  See Side Bar by JuseBeats!  

 

 

In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock

In his magnum opus

about a world… full of extras

in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

He nods

I’m  thinking

Disappointed… in us!

[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]

Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo

Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour

People who think they are special

People who know they are not

People who wish they were

Impeccable

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

Whispers prologue

Guess what we did?

A Springboard!

A party of twenty

Three couples played before

winking and willing

shills playing in the round

Lovely trips on the Hill

in augmented VR

I’m thinking…

Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!

Barefoot bell bottomed hippies

Denim sweeping the ground

[Reserved]

“Interrupting — The Star-Spangled Banner like

That Doors dude dizzy on Dewey Decimal”

Copyright 2017 by Tang

 

Gawd made them like him

they never met — ticks time

            Copyright © 2017 The Parthenon

The flag was a smoke screen over a grid

a chance to be — a white Supreme

Copyright © 2017 — Nudedcendg

They were diptychs, triptychs, and chapters…

The beginnings and endings… you can play too >>>

Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller

Shut the fuck up

Sit the fuck down!

Copyright © 2017 by Donjoncity

[Reserved]

Revolutionary hair —  fists in the air

Dragging us back in the mud

Blunt antiquity

Move on Woodstock!

Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles

Bombs in black holes!

[Where did you go?]

We should be sunning in the Bahamas

chilling on hemp swings and

chairs swiveling in immersive environments

Higher than kite fights

A soaring for points experience

Get off the ride Woodstock!

You had your turn — at freedom

Thank you

Exit signs are easy to find — look

The dragon is in the window

Freedom is accessible

Wonder is a trip

with walk through assistants

Dreams of power and prizes

Optional…

Fall out and Jack into

a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock

in his magnum opus

about a world… full of extra

architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal

He wants

Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo

Zufi, the Saperavi

Whispers song

We don’t want to feel we’re high…

We just want to think we’re high

in Dubai

We don’t want to feel we’re high…

We just want to think we’re high

in Dubai

Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller

I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).  I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity.  I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood.  I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.

I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved]

“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto

and this…

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

 

ONE ACT PLAY — SPRINGBOARD!

FLASH DRAMA

Genre: Comedy

9 actors

Duration: 10 mins

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Cece – Art Curator, Poet

Tess – Communicator

Lena – Data Scientist

Wife – Analyst

Wife — Homemaker

Said – Data Scientist

Etan – Consultant

Luda – Data Scientist and aspiring Poet

Kent – Data Scientist

ACT 1 — Installation Art (Sit next to me)

The scene takes place in a private home theater under a Proscenium arch. Stage right is a door to the dining area. Stage left is a door to the great room. Upstage is a grand screen.

It is Tess and Said’s turn to host the Football Sunday dinner party for three married couples – their closest friends. Tess’ single BFF, CeCe with the gratuitous beauty, on everyone’s dream team (and it is rude to stare) is visiting from the city – and having so much more to offer, as usual she is flying too close to the sun and upsetting the social balance.

CECE: I have a story to tell! I promise you — you’re going to love it! You simply must experience it. The absolute audacity of the writer is stunning. She’s THAT motherfucker. (Giggle) That bitch. Tricky — Romanticist.  Epic like the Iliad…

(RESTLESS MOVEMENT)

ALL

We’re watching the game… in a minute.

CECE:  But, wait…

CONVERSATIONS HAPPENING IN THE ROUND END DOWNSTAGE

UPSTAGE

SAID:  Of course you have data.  Do you know how to use it? Give me data.  I’ll give you algorithms… synced with the principles of Six Sigma.  It’s over.

TESS:  I said, If you don’t knock on my door, someone else will.

STAGE LEFT

ETAN:  Evidently, you’re attracted to me, and I applaud you for knowing who you want.  I’m flattered.  But, I don’t sway that way.

WIFE:  What did he say?

ETAN:  “It doesn’t matter.”

WIFE:  Oh! O-kay…  (LOOKS AWAY STAGE RIGHT WITH A GAFFAW) He’s funny.

ETAN: Define funny.

WIFE: Funny is funny.

ETAN: What’s funny to you, may not be funny to me.

WIFE:  Are we going to go back and forth on what is funny? I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Project #99 (GAFFAW)  Again.  You pushed me… But, it was good. It’s true.  Where was I? I’m crazy! Yeah. No doubt… (LOOKS AWAY) But, I love you.

TWO BEATS

WIFE: I’m kickstarting my project this week. (THROWS HEAD BACK DEFIANTLY)

(BEFORE WHISPERING IN HER EAR)

ETAN: “Sex packets …”

WIFE: (SUDDENLY) You said, I would be your wife, not your slave.

DOWNSTAGE LENA WHISPERS TO LUDA AND THE AUDIENCE

LENA: So, what if it’s all true? Does that give you the right to kick my ass and keep it moving? You’re a mutation. It does not sound like we’re the lazy ones.  We will survive. You will not… and if that’s true why would I compete with you, when you are doing all the work? You cannot survive without us. We’re going with. Wouldn’t you?

LUDA: Human DNA enlarges mouse brains.

(LENA LOOKS AWAY STAGE LEFT WITH A THROATY LAUGH)

(LUDA TURNS TO THE AUDIENCE WITH A SOLILOQUY

STAGE RIGHT

HOMEMAKER:  Look babe, it’s tulle and mesh — and if I bend over just right…

KENT:  I am not going to kiss your ass (Chuckles)

HOMEMAKER:  Why not?  You’ve been kissing it.

KENT:  Don’t try to goad me into an argument to justify your own.

HOMEMAKER:  I’m just saying… if it’s in our heads, it’s pure fantasy.  Don’t float what you imagine out here in the void, like what you think is really real.  If it’s not real… like your hands on me — it’s fiction.  You cannot possibly know what I think, how I feel, how I will respond to your bullshit… or even how you will respond to mine.  I thought?  When was the last time you imagined a confrontation?  Of course, it never happens like the movies in our heads.  Not even close!  But, to be content to covet the same dreams, is so… unimaginative.  Is that the best we can do?  To be part of a crowd?   Look at me.  (VOGUES) I am the fastest swimmer in a sea of zoon!

KENT:  (Chuckles) Who the fuck are you reading lately?

HOMEMAKER:  (Playfully) We have to spend more time together!  I do have a wonderful quote… “I have a lesson for you.  Do you want it?”

KENT:  “I have a lesson for you.  Do you want it?”  Who said that?

HOMEMAKER:  My mother… in so many words.

KENT:  He called me Money.

(HE BEGINS LIKE A STORY SHE’S HEARD BEFORE)

KENT:  (CONTINUES) He said, I want a boy who gets what he came for. A boy who knows he’s the strongest swimmer in a sea of zoon. It’s true, a boy could have been pushed by stronger swimmers behind him. Like Mad Max. I want a boy who would survive the hood. A boy that knows changing direction is nothing. The trick is to breathe again. That’s the boy I want. Do you think you could be that boy? I would sit up straight, tip my head, and say, Yes Sir. I’m that boy.

HOMEMAKER:  Every time you tell that story I’d forget to mention, it feels like he’s looming over you. What were you sitting on?

KENT:  My potty chair… I thought you knew?

HOMEMAKER:  Oh no. He didn’t! (GIGGLES) Your father is bananas.

KENT AND HOMEMAKER LAUGH TOGETHER

KENT:  Jules Winfield reciting Ezekiel.

HOMEMAKER:  That’s why you’re so ambitious. I love that about you, Honey. Look at us! We’re a Stupid Power Couple.

KENT:  (CHUCKLES)  The first time we met, I wondered… how does THAT work? (LAUGHS)

(HOMEMAKER FIGHTS A SMILE)

KENT:  You said, “I’m not looking for a husband.”

(BOTH LAUGH ON KEY)

HOMEMAKER:  You want to play with me?  Are you sure? Are you sure?  Are you sure?

STAGE LEFT

(HUDDLING WITH HIS SILENT WIFE)

ETAN:  Conscious decisions are all that I can respect.  Don’t cling to insanity, or criminal passion, or peer pressure, or social expectations.  Don’t talk to me about losing control — momentarily.  Or, the poverty and violence of pain heaped upon more pain because you’re black.  This is not a gang-rape.  This is not Dionysia all over again, where women and children are sacrificed, and blood is beer.  If I change my language, the outcome will still be the same…  (STOP)

(THREE BEATS)

ETAN:  Jack Kerouac… likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow and unrestrained association to reveal the unconscious…  because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose!  Am I going to read that trippy book again, with absolutely no punctuation period, when I can imagine my very own Mardou Fox?

STARING OPENLY AT ETAN, LUDA STOPS LISTENING AND LOOKING UP TO THE HEAVENS, STROKES HIS BEARD, AND TURNS TO THE AUDIENCE WITH A SECOND SOLILOQUY.

LUDA TURNS AWAY FROM HIS AUDIENCE AND LOOKS STAGE RIGHT AT KENT 

A PHONE HELD IN KENT’S HAND ILLUMINATES HIS FACE.  KENT SPEAKS LOUD [AS IF] SIGNALING THE END 

KENT:  A black man is charged with burning black Churches in St. Louis Missouri…

KENT LOOKS UP FROM THE SCREEN.  HIS FACE IS STILL.  EYES UNFOCUSED.  HE MOVES HIS LIPS.

KENT:  Unbelieveable.

HOMEMAKER:  I’m gonna’ need to pinch him.

KENT AND THE HOMEMAKER THROW THEIR HEADS BACK IN HEARTY LAUGHTER.  THE HOMEMAKER SUDDENLY STOPS AND LOOKS AT KENT.  WHISPERS.

HOMEMAKER:  Wake up, blue pill.

THE HOMEMAKER LOOKS AT THE AUDIENCE — IN A MONOLOGUE — LOUDER THAN KENT.

HOMEMAKER:  It’s the Age of STEM.  With VRs for your fancies, imagining aggressions you never lose. Where are we going? Who are we doing? How shall we dress for the joie de vivre?  I want to meet the best Black Rock Band on the planet and their Muse; to be the woman in the Dolmus, the Driver, Simon… I want to hear Luda deliver his soliloquies in a courtyard enclosed by trees, with stapled bark once covered with flyers — for missing pets, and outworn, archaic, and unimaginative campaigns and trade for sale or giveaway. I want to be where someone says, I have a story to tell, and those who’ve heard the story reply, we’re watching the game in a minute…  I know how the story ends.

(WITH A MONA LISA SMILE)

HOMEMAKER:  (TAGGING) I am sorry, but, honestly, the 21st Century is so… contrived.  (STOPS SHORT OF LAUGHTER) Let’s move along.

CENTER STAGE

CECE:  We have plenty of time!  Indulge me.  I’m going to read it.

(MORE RESTLESS MOVEMENT)

CECE: Come on! It’s my birthday! Okay, it’s not my birthday….Listen! This is a quote from Interview magazine. I think it’s poetic.  “I use pot for depression, and I am depressed often.  When I am high, I am very creative, and because my word is work in progress, I have no regrets. Self actualization is anticlimactic…  I am the hopeless writer.  I spent most of my life being angry that I, didn’t have an audience that would pay for my work.  Girls, gotta’ make a living.  It’s amazing what turns people on.  It’s not at all what I imagined. I spent too much time trying to create a persona, when I am one.   I suppose it’s okay to spend your life chasing a dream.  You have to have one or two to live for.”  She’s extra… Did I mention Ovid?

If you don’t like it (PAUSE) I’ll blow every cock in the room.

HUSBANDS

Whoa! What? Fuck? Really?

WIVES

Shut up! Girl! Bitch! Are you crazy?

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