Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming "Dear Diary"

Video-Graphic Alchemy:

Transforming “Dear Diary”

(A Multimedia Retrospective)

by Elayne Zalis

Revised February 19, 2012

© 2012 by Elayne Zalis

All rights reserved In this retrospective, I explain the unconventional methodology I used to “compose” Vagabond Scribe (Leah’s Backstory), a literary experiment I began in the late 1980s while under the spell of video art and emergent digital technologies. That literary experiment influenced my approach to Arella’s Repertoire, a novel I later wrote that elaborates on and takes to new levels the earlier work of fiction. “Leah’s Belated Hurrah,” a memory play, transforms the novel into a production for the interactive, digital age. Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming “Dear Diary” also brings together the artistic, multimedia, and literary work from my personal repertoire that inspired the retrospective. On some level all these projects resonate with one another, as well as with my critical work, and invite readings greater than the sum of the parts. I’d welcome your comments, and I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about my work. Please feel free to e-mail me: [email protected]. This text is available as a book on Amazon.com.

* No part of the manuscript, including the images, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming “Dear Diary”

To supplement a new edition of Vagabond Scribe (Leah’s Backstory), a literary experiment I began in the late 1980s, I reedited the multimedia projects I was working on while that text gestated: Give-A-Show Projector, a black-and-white computer graphics series inspired by my fifth-grade diary; Fifth-Grade School Sing, a collection of dreamlike color photographs based on videos of those graphics; and Video-Graphic Alchemy, image-text compositions that further transform those impressions. I was then a graduate student at the University of Iowa, where I had the chance to explore interdisciplinary, multimedia—even hypertextual—approaches to literature and art. Before long I was switching back and forth between the autobiographical art projects and the fictional writing. Fact and fiction blurred and my literary experiment took shape. Too unconventional to interest most book publishers, Vagabond Scribe occupied a special place in my personal archives, preserving for me an invaluable memory bank that I often consulted. In fact, I relied on that memory bank years later when I wrote Arella’s Repertoire, a novel that reintroduces characters from Vagabond Scribe. For these reasons, I decided to revise Vagabond Scribe and to explain how it evolved. Although I had no idea in advance where I was heading when I started that text more than twenty years ago, I see now that my multimedia projects had a major impact on the creative choices I made as a writer. A turning point occurred in the mid-1980s when I learned to use a word processor. Excited by this new technology, I was eager to discover what else a personal computer could do. I met some multimedia artists who introduced me to the wonders of computer graphics and I got hooked. With a black-and-white Macintosh computer and Superpaint software, I explored new creative territory, yet my training as a writer and longtime diarist proved harder to shake than I had expected. Instead of becoming an artist overnight, as I secretly had hoped, I designed projects that inadvertently reaffirmed my attachment to the written word. My childhood diary, which I had been rereading, provided the inspiration and source materials for these initial forays into the digital realm. Operating intuitively, without any artistic precedents in mind, I transformed the young girl’s writing in unexpected ways. During the first phase, I used the Superpaint software to rework selected diary passages, a process that resulted in a series of black-and-white drawings called Give-A-Show-Projector (see appendix A).

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Meanwhile, I had added video to my repertoire, reviving my interest in its creative potential. For the next phase, then, I adapted the series of computer drawings I’d made to a video format, hoping to further transform my childhood diary while also introducing another layer of media to the open-ended compositions. Because I had access only to basic analog cameras and editing facilities, I improvised more than I might have if I had been working in a state-of-the-art studio. I also focused more on concept than on technological prowess. I saw as my audience enthusiasts of innovative work across a range of media and genres. After much trial and error, I produced the video Fifth-Grade School Sing. To achieve the desired effect, I mounted hard copies of each drawing on a television screen during a live broadcast, and then I videotaped the intermedia convergences that unpredictably ensued. At the same time, I used my remote control to channel surf and thus change the patterns of light, color, movement, and sound from the televisual background that faintly peered through. I treated each drawing separately and relied on chance to determine what emanated from the background. Viewers see a modified TV that doubles as a frame of reference. In this context, my fifth-grade diary, transposed into a series of computer graphics, interfaces with “live” televisual broadcasts on a customized video screen, an event that I documented from behind the lens of a portable video camera set up in my living room. Like the young girl who wrote in her diary long ago, I also found comfort in a private space beyond the spotlight, a matter of geography as well as of the mind: somehow I recreated the child’s space, and I felt at home. (For the young girl, writing was one refuge; watching television was another. She often did both at the same time.) It seems fitting, given these dynamics, that during my transitions from one creative medium to another I drew on my childhood diary for guidance and support, since it preserved traces of that early scene of writing and the magic I had felt there. Looking back on the video experiments, I’d say I recaptured a little of that magic: it provided the impetus to keep going, to trust my intuition, and to indulge my curiosity. Most of all, it recharged my imagination. Fifth-Grade School Sing remains a work-in-progress that, among other things, documents staged performances in my living room on several different occasions. After accumulating many hours of footage, I retreated to the editing room to figure out what to do with this material. There I began an instructive laboratory exercise that allowed me to experiment with the drawings as well as with voice, sound, and character-generated text. I spent a lot of time trying to assemble my footage in a satisfying way. When I reached an impasse, I made still prints of selected shots (see appendix B).

Video-Graphic Alchemy

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The dreamlike color photographs represent another transmutation of the early diary writing. These photographs bear little resemblance to the black-and-white computer drawings from which they originated, though traces of the diary writing can be discerned. In this respect, the color images resemble a palimpsest. I enjoyed making all these artifacts and working with different media, yet after a while I realized I was searching for something else, something elusive I couldn’t define—and there were no maps to help me navigate through the space I had entered. Inexplicably compelled to proceed, despite feeling lost, I moved ahead with the project, which seemed to acquire a life and momentum of its own. In retrospect, I suspect that I wasn’t as alone as I thought, for I believe unconscious forces were at play, offering subtle hints and providing clues. During a particularly frustrating phase, I found myself returning to the original diary writing to work through an idea that had come to me while editing my video. Back at my computer, I typed passages from the diary and cut up the printed copies into hundreds of little pieces that I then collaged together and taped onto sheets of paper and large poster boards, sort of like assembling video footage or editing a film. Next, I retyped the diary passages according to the collaged layouts. After finishing with my diary from 1964, I repeated the procedure for my diary from 1965. These collages morphed into another transformation of the young girl’s writing, act 1 of Vagabond Scribe, and Leah, a fictional character, emerged (see appendix C). Blending fact and fiction, I developed the technique further in later chapters. Before long I had assembled an elaborate paper trail corresponding to the first twenty-five years or so of a woman’s life. In this way the protagonist of my story acquired a personal history along with a unique memory bank. Video-Graphic Alchemy represents another experiment with image and text. Designed for both the printed page and the computer screen, the intermedia collage brings together video stills from Fifth-Grade School Sing and passages from act 2 and act 3 of Vagabond Scribe (see appendix D). In this rendition, the child’s diary writing evokes not only its distant past but also its recent transformations and the conditions under which they occurred. My excursions into new creative territory served me well. I learned that when I reached an impasse with one medium, I could always turn to another medium or even create hybrids of my own. This approach stimulated my imagination and opened me to unconscious stirrings that I might have otherwise missed. By working through privately written texts in new spatial, temporal, and discursive contexts, I expanded my repertoire and rechanneled memories. Intermedia convergences played into the stage-by-stage construction of my stories. These dynamics also informed the construction of a novel I wrote, Arella’s Repertoire, the next transmutation of my personal archives. On the cusp of 2000, Arella finds a home in cyberspace where she and Leah, her alter ego, look backward to move ahead (see appendix E). The transformations continue. First published as a printed book, Arella’s Repertoire may resurface in other formats. Meanwhile, it has already morphed into “Leah’s Belated Hurrah,” a collection of scripted dance performances designed for interactive digital platforms, as well as for print, film, or video.

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Appendix A: Give-A-Show Projector (computer graphics)

The following series of eight black-and-white drawings is based on a diary I kept in 1964 when I lived in Miami. Decades later, while sequestered in a Midwestern college town, I used a Macintosh computer and Superpaint software to rework selected passages from my early writing. The drawings represent the first of many transformations the diary would undergo. Adaptation to video came next, along with the addition of color.

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The drawings:

Give-A-Show-Projector

Orange Bowl

The Beatles

Seaquarium

Petticoat Junction

Russia Sent

Dance

Miami Beach


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Give-A-Show-Projector

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Orange Bowl


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The Beatles

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Seaquarium


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Petticoat Junction

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Russia Sent


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Dance

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Miami Beach


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Appendix B: Fifth-Grade School Sing

(video stills) In the video that generated this material, my fifth-grade diary, transposed into a series of computer graphics, interfaces with “live” televisual broadcasts, a process I captured on tape. Reproduced as dreamlike color photographs that resemble palimpsests, the video stills both preserve and transform the imagery that those private sessions produced.

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Appendix C: Vagabond Scribe (Leah’s Backstory)

Excerpt from Act One

PREFACE

The young Leah as a woman archives traces of her life. She begins the first stage of her retrospective in the mid-1980s, at the opening of Vagabond Scribe. Many years have passed since she left Miami, the place of her birth, her childhood, her breakdowns and awakenings. Her wanderings have brought her to the American Midwest, the country’s heartland. Far from her hometown, separated by time and space, she feels ready to commemorate the South Florida chapters of her past.

From her latest stopover, a protective retreat, Leah taps into both personal and cultural memories while also weaving together magical forays into other worlds. Her early diaries and journals help, and so do her old letters, as well as her collection of books and memorabilia. She follows paper trails, leads to real and imagined places she has visited along the way. She focuses on representative periods from her childhood (1964–65), teens (1969–71), and young adulthood (1975–80). The texts that aid her memory work provide valuable signposts not only as she looks backward but also as she looks ahead.

Her mission becomes clear: to transform her archive into forms she can share with others. Hence this collection, a work-in-progress that looks behind the scenes at a memory bank in the making, a resource for ideas and inspiration. For now, Leah offers previews of stories to come. At times she changes names, masks identities, and adds creative embellishments. Fact and fiction blend.

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ACT ONE: A CHILD’S SPACE (1964–65)

I reread and rewrite my childhood diaries, embracing public stories privately told. (Twenty years ago, my cartridge pen in hand, I watched Patty Duke and Donna Reed broadcast in the background.) Voices weathered, ambiance cooled, I pass through again a space made for writing, a child’s space. During my visits, I remember what that space had felt like then and how I had retreated there, to sketch out a world, to validate a life. (Twenty years later, my computer keyboard in place, I watch Patty Duke and Donna Reed cablecast in the background.)

For “Fifth-Grade School Sing,” I draw on a diary I began in 1964 when I was ten years old. For “Love Potion Number Nine,” I draw on a diary I began a year later. Always addressed to “Dear Diary,” these notes remind me not only of memories I preserved but also of thoughts and experiences I never documented when I was a young girl living in Miami. Aware of blind spots and exclusions, I work through the early texts, bringing them together in new ways. I rearrange the pieces and look for clues to unwritten histories and forgotten stories. In my mind and on the page, chronology unravels, geography disperses, and backgrounds and foregrounds merge. I imagine endless variations.

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Fifth-Grade School Sing (1964) Mom took Jesse, Adele, and me to the movies. We saw A Hard Day’s Night. It was a Beatles movie. We also saw Viva Las Vegas, with Elvis Presley and Ann Margaret. We ate dinner at Burger King. . . . LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON V. BARRY MORRIS

GOLDWATER . . . STANFORD ACHIEVEMENT TEST. . . . Penny taught Adele and me a funny verse, and I taught it to Yvonne. . . . A STAMP AT 7-11 . . . PTA. . . . We said we were all witches and that it was witch language. . . . CHARMING CHATTY. . . . It goes: “Ish ka bibaly, olton dolton, bo bo ba de tan dot an, wa bash ba do.” In the reading group, Miguel sat next to me. . . . FIFTY-YARD DASH. . . . He was crazy. First he was touching my hair. Then he pulled out a string of my hair and used it for a bookmark. . . . SCHOOL SING. . . . Next he put his fingers underneath my dress and tickled me. Today is the last day I’m writing you when I’m ten. . . . PATTY DUKE. We saw two films at school. One was America the Beautiful. The other was President Kennedy. . . . BEATLES MAGAZINE. . . . It showed when he was having his funeral, when he was a little boy, and when he was married. . . . PENPALS IN ENGLAND. . . . I dived off the high diving board for the first time in my life. It was fun. . . . LUNAR

ECLIPSE. . . . Nadine dived, but she did a belly flop. . . . CRANDON PARK ZOO. . . . The lady that lives in the pink house across the street is taking pictures of everyone with a movie camera. . . . LIBRARY BOOKS . . . CHINESE FOOD. . . . She took a picture of Glenn, the mailman, handing Cora the mail. . . . MOM AND DAD. . . . Pedro is going to ask his civics teacher, who’s a lawyer, what we can do because she might use trick photography and bribe us. . . . DOUBLE DUTCH. . . . Nobody likes Sarah now, including me. We can’t stand to hear her name, so we gave her one. . . . ETCH-A-SKETCH. . . . First it was “It,” but then we changed it to “Creature.” Victor Torres played A-boy in the Christmas play. . . . SPELLING BEE . . . BARBECUE PIT. . . . Russia sent up the first three men in space. . . . SHOPPING CENTER . . . ASPIRIN . . . BIRTHSTONE RING. . . . “Why don’t you go sit on Alberto’s lap?” some kids said to me at school. . . . HURRICANE

PARTY . . . ORANGE BOWL. . . . Now I changed the channel. This afternoon Penny came over and so did Yvonne. We picked kumquats off our tree so we could eat them. . . . SHENANIGANS. . . . Then we played Steal the Bacon. Later we did handstands. . . . MIRACLE MILE. On The Ed Sullivan Show, I saw the Ladybugs. They copied the Beatles. . . . REPORT CARDS. . . . There are four members of the band. Three are the daughters on Petticoat Junction. . . . ARM-FLEX HANG. . . . The other one used to be Zelda on The Dobie Gillis Show. . . . A HOT DOG AND A HAMBURGER. . . . Today was about the coldest day we’ve had. Usually I take my sweater off, but I didn’t take it off today at all. . . . BOOK CLUB. . . . We didn’t go to the doctor because Adele had diarrhea in the morning and Jesse had a cough. Anyway, it was a rainy day. . . . WATER WIGGLE . . . GIVE-A-SHOW PROJECTOR. . . . I’m watching Jack Benny, with Peter, Paul, and Mary. . . . STANDING BROAD JUMP. . . . Mrs. Hanley said they were both good ideas. I used to like him, but I don’t anymore. . . . FIVE-YEAR DIARY. . . . Jose’s mother gave us ten more phone books.

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Nick made a part for me in his movie. . . . WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA. . . . I’ll play the writer when she was a little girl. . . . SLUMBER PARTY. . . . Nick said I’d have to spray my hair brown. (When you wash it the color comes out.) . . . BARBIE

WALLET. . . . I might wear a wig. DAVE CLARK FIVE. . . . We went to the Youth Fair this afternoon. I played a few games and was going to go on some rides, but Mom and Grandpa Ben and Grandma Ada and everyone walked too fast and I lost them. . . . MIAMI BEACH. . . . I looked for them but I couldn’t find them, so I went back to the car. . . . POPEYE PLAYHOUSE. . . . I would’ve done some things myself, like go on some rides or play a game . . . BOBBY RYDELL . . . but Mom had the money. . . . After dinner we listened to Carmensita play the guitar. . . . “TWIST AND SHOUT”. . . . I’m trying to get in shape for the 600-yard dash by running around the block. . . . FLUFFY SLIPPERS . . . BOARDWALK. . . . The jury decided Jack Ruby was guilty. He’ll get the electric chair. . . . DINETTE SET . . . BIRTHDAY PRESENT . . . A WRINKLE IN TIME . . . I’m going to be late for bed. [This chapter continues for another ten pages, although the excerpt ends here.]


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Appendix D: Video-Graphic Alchemy

(image-text compositions) Video-Graphic Alchemy brings together video stills from Fifth-Grade School Sing and passages from act 2 and act 3 of Vagabond Scribe. I’ve arranged the ten compositions as a narrative that unfolds in a recommended sequence. Documentation of quoted passages appears at the end of the piece.

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The moon has mooned a twinkling twinkle borrowed from the stars, and in that glow you are a smile gleaming from my own. I was a character in my own play. I opened the box and forced them to look. But instead of a beautiful thing, which I thought would be there, there was a mass of fragments, and pieces.

The wave breaks. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.


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Loving fantasy as I do, I sometimes have difficulty coming to terms with the realities of everyday living where I interact with other people who really breathe and wishing doesn’t always work. I accept the fantasy part of myself, glad I’m able to see a multicolored world through magical eyes.

The moon is in my windowpane, the moon is in my bed, I’ll race the moon across the sky and eat it for my bread. I don’t care, ma, I don’t care. In that state of hallucinated lucidity, not only did they see the images of their own dreams, but some saw the images dreamed by others. Where is there a place to reinvent gestures and words?

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Treetops and winding streams fill the screen as the camera slowly zooms in on a young woman, HELENE, strolling through a New England forest. Thin, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, she wears silver sandals and a turquoise summer gown. Her sculpted earrings reflect sunlight. She plays a flute.

The ENSEMBLE becomes waves, gulls, shore birds.

Tuesday: Nothing. Existed.


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The curvature of space itself would give you stereoscopic narrative, while human personality seen across a continuum would perhaps become prismatic. Peace on Earth

She is afraid, that child, of night, solitude, illness and death, in the evenings she draws the curtains over the dark window pane which frightens her, and pines merely because she is not cherished enough.

“Did you recognize me at once?” “Of course. You’ve changed somewhat. But you have the sign.” “The sign. What kind of sign?” “We used to call it the mark of Cain earlier. . . . It’s our sign. You’ve always had it, that’s why I became your friend. But now it has become more distinct.” He’s going to photograph me at a cemetery in the country.

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Once one has experienced LSD, existential revolution, fought the intellectual game-playing of the individual in society, of one’s identity, one realizes that action is the only reality; not only reality but morality as well. I expand the dimensions of a psychic museum that houses a spiral of my ahas. Richard Wright’s Black Boy presents Wright as a victim of white society, challenging its restraints just as the “black boy” in the poster confronts the sneering grin of a white monster hiding within the crevices of authoritarian impositions and provocative expectations.

No, I am not really bad-tempered. Rather, the fact is that I have never succeeded in being anything at all—whether kind-hearted or cruel, a villain or a saint, a hero or an insect.

MAGIC THEATER . . . FOR MADMEN ONLY!


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Now, in all memories, a fictitious past occupies the place of any other. I sit in my hotel room comfortably propped against the headboard of my twin bed. This scrap of paper rests against a Key West telephone directory that lies on my lap. I contemplate the “Magic Island” while munching on a pear.

I guide him into me, it’s the right season, I hurry. It is death to freeze and package this penumbra of vague feelings and sudden thought into words (but it must be done). In twenty-three years I can’t imagine true thought without a receptive target, an enticer of eventual articulation. Silent, mind and soul spinning, I am thinking for someone, to someone. Ultimately, through someone. You have been my anti-pole for the last several weeks. I’m seeing myself through my you, or at least memories of your expression.

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After a silence, it is a woman’s voice (the woman is also invisible on the screen) that answers, in the same theatrical tone, but still measured, calm, cadenced. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. Rather than agonize over a form for my ideas, I will flow with the ideas I want to express and then fit them into a form later on, when I have a grasp of my creative direction and am into other worlds. Hope to see you at every single concert around. I can always notice you and you only so you have to be there. Time removes me spatially from outside society, then psychically from my companions. But does not a last little phantom, more like me than any of the others, remain sitting in my chimney corner, lost in a dream and as good as gold as it bends over a book which it forgets to open? There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, “Consume me.”


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Very quickly, too, there came to me that odd sensation that only on the stage was I really alone and safe from my fellow-creatures, protected from the whole world by the barrier of light. Quiet thoughts racing only gently, swift breeze sweeping cluttered mind She said: “You must remember that the end of an analysis does not mean the end of the experience itself.” “You mean, the yeast goes on working?” She smiled and nodded.

And finally two basic choices: (1) fever, not objectivity; immersion, not detachment; immediacy, not distance; OR (2) “Does she have a need for clarity when the labyrinth of chaos becomes too dark, too narrow, too engulfing?” (chewed regurgitation of Anaïs Nin). Can one bounce back and forth? Have you? Power to the People

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For there were no fifty white horses struck by lightening in the garden, no sail-boats moored in the lily ponds. . . . Nothing is real except making rhythm of one’s thought and translating it into beautiful gestures. Please forget you ever lived your former life and start again.

Equilibrium is not necessarily stagnation; it can be a pleasant respite from the intensity of soaring heights.

Lillian had thought that Jay would create her because he was the artist, that he would be able to see her clearly as she had seen in him the great painter. . . . Then a wave would lift her up again . . . to where she was now, on a height, and from where she could glimpse other perspectives.


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Dueling mirrors frame tensions between the apartment’s gold velvets and black furs, the glare of winter fire caught in between. A revolving strobe light multiples images flickering along four mirrored walls. He feared she had the power to snap the cord

which bound him securely to ordinary life. Paloma takes her shoes off and moves toward the heat. When I write . . . I use the book like dynamite, to blast myself out of isolation. It has the effect of running away from home.

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Documentation: “Video-Graphic Alchemy”

(Quotations follow the order of the preceding text.)

“The moon has mooned . . . a smile gleaming from my own.” Leah, “The Moon,” Miami, fall of 1970. “I was a character in my own play. . . . a mass of fragments, and pieces.” Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (New York: Bantam, 1973), 252. “The wave breaks. I am the foam that sweeps. . . . a girl, here in this room.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves, in Jacob’s Room and the Waves: Two Complete Novels (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 249. “Loving fantasy . . . through magical eyes.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “The moon is in my windowpane. . . . I don’t care.” Doris Lessing, Play With A Tiger, in Plays By and About Women, ed. Victoria Sullivan and James Hatch (New York: Vintage, 1974), 233. “In that state of hallucinated lucidity . . . images dreamed by others.” Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Avon, 1971), 51. “Where is there a place . . . gestures and words?” Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, The Three Marias: New Portuguese Letters, trans. Helen R. Lane (New York: Bantam, 1976), 220–21. “Treetops and winding streams. . . . plays a flute.” Leah, “Candlelight Reception,” unpublished screenplay, Miami, 1977. “The ENSEMBLE . . . shore birds.” Megan Terry, Approaching Simone, in Women in Drama: An Anthology, ed. Harriet Kriegel (New York: New American Library, 1975), 363. “Tuesday . . . Existed.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1964), 103. “The curvature of space . . . become prismatic.” Lawrence Durrell, Clea (New York: Giant Cardinal, 1961), 126. “Peace on Earth” Classmate’s inscription in Leah’s high school yearbook, circa 1970–71.


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“She is afraid, that child . . . not cherished enough.” Colette, The Vagabond, trans. Enid McLeod (New York: Farrrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1955), 203. “‘Did you recognize . . . . distinct.’” Herman Hesse, Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth, trans. Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 114. “He’s going to photograph . . . in the country.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “Once one has experienced LSD . . . morality as well.” Abbie Hoffman, (Free), Revolution for the Hell of It (New York: Dial P, 1970), 9. “I expand the dimensions . . . spiral of my ahas.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “Richard Wright’s Black Boy . . . provocative expectations.” Leah, “Confrontations,” high school essay, Miami, spring of 1971. “No, I am not really bad-tempered. . . . a hero or an insect.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Letters from the Underworld, trans. C. J. Hogarth (New York: Dutton, 1957), 7. “MAGIC THEATER . . . FOR MADMEN ONLY!” Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, trans. Basil Creighton (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1969), 37. “Now, in all memories . . . the place of any other.” Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” trans. Alastair Reid, in Ficciones (New York: Grove P, 1962), 34. “A palimpsest . . . layer by layer” Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 18. “I sit in my hotel room . . . a pear.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “I guide him into me . . . I hurry.” Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (New York: Popular Library, 1976), 191. “It is death to freeze and package this penumbra. . . . memories of your expression.” Troy, letter to Leah, 1976. “After a silence, it is a woman’s voice . . . calm, cadenced.” Alain Robbe-Grillet, Last Year at Marienbad [screenplay], trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove P, 1962), 22. “But one day the ‘why’ arises . . . weariness tinged with amazement.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1955), 10. “Rather than agonize . . . into other worlds.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80.

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“Hope to see you at every single concert . . . so you have to be there.” Classmate’s inscription in Leah’s high school yearbook, circa 1970–71. “Time removes me spatially . . . then psychically from my companions.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “But does not a last little phantom . . . a book which it forgets to open?” Colette, Vagabond, 74. “There was a star riding . . . ‘Consume me.’” Woolf, Waves, 218. “Very quickly, too, there came . . . barrier of light.” Colette, Vagabond, 32. “Quiet thoughts racing . . . sweeping cluttered mind” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “She said: “You must remember. . . . smiled and nodded.” Lessing, Golden Notebook, 249–50. “And finally two basic choices. . . . Have you?” Troy, letter. “Power to the People” Classmate’s inscription in Leah’s high school yearbook, circa 1970–71. “For there were no fifty white horses . . . lily ponds.” Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1965), 171. “Nothing is real . . . beautiful gestures.” Colette, Vagabond, 47. “Please forget . . . start again.” Nestor, letter to Leah, 1977. “Equilibrium. . . . soaring heights.” Leah, personal writing, Miami, circa 1975–80. “Lillian had thought. . . . great painter.” Anaïs Nin, Cities of the Interior (Chicago: Swallow P, 1975), 111. “Then a wave . . . other perspectives.” Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City (New York: Bantam, 1970), 40. “Dueling mirrors frame. . . . mirrored walls.” Leah, “Tryst,” unpublished short story, Miami, 1977. “He feared she had the power . . . ordinary life.” Anaïs Nin, Collages (Chicago: Swallow P, 1964), 73. “Paloma takes her shoes . . . the heat.” Leah, “Tryst.”


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“When I write . . . out of isolation.” Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume Three, 1939–1944, ed. Gunther Stuhlmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), 174. “It has the effect . . . away from home.” Eve Merriam, Eve, Paula Wagner, and Jack Hoffsiss, Out of Our Fathers’ House, in The New Women’s Theatre: Ten Plays by Contemporary American Women, ed. Honor Moore (New York: Vintage, 1977), 509.

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Appendix E: Arella’s Repertoire

Synopsis and Excerpt

The novel begins as Arella prepares for 2000 and the fresh start it represents. More at home in cyberspace than anywhere she has actually lived, she reinvents herself and her life story for readers of a multimedia web diary she calls Arella’s Repertoire, a blend of memoir, travelogue, and blog. Like her Russian forebears, who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the previous century, she imagines belonging somewhere. Motivated as much by a child’s longing for fantasy as by a woman’s desire for truth, she highlights scenes from Miami, where she came of age in the 1960s, and Los Angeles, where she settled in the 1990s after many stops along the way. Characters who star in this virtual drama recapture worlds Arella has known and weave together the memories, dreams, and imaginings that have contributed to her development as a woman and a writer in postmodern America. Framed as an online text that Arella posts incrementally throughout the month of December 1999, the story taps into many sources, including private and public archives across a range of media, including the Internet. To complement the personal memories documented in letters, diaries, journals, autograph books, yearbooks, and home movies, Arella designs a tour of the web that highlights the public, social dimensions of her life story. As the tour demonstrates, most books, films, TV programs, music, famous people, historical events, popular trends, special interests, and places that have made an impression on her are represented somewhere online, situated within the collective repository that the web supports. Reminded where she has been and inspired to keep going, she envisions a role for herself in the twenty-first century that builds on her experiments with old and new media. At the same time, she leaves her mark in cyberspace. In part I, “A Time Traveler En Route” (excerpted here), Arella posts the first two entries of her blog. This performative prelude sets the stage for the main narrative.


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On the Cusp of 2000 (Posted December 1, 1999)

When I awakened this morning on my living room couch, I was still wearing my gold dancing dress, a reminder of last night’s virtual excursions. Adrift between worlds, I soon felt the lure of my actual surroundings. The drapes were wide open, letting sunshine filter through sliding glass doors that overlook the terrace. I could see the Hollywood Hills in the distance, a perfect backdrop, I thought, for recounting my latest wanderings.

So here I sit moments later, typing away. Nothing makes sense at first, and then images begin to flicker, restoring fragments of memories and dreams. With you, my readers, I share these fleeting impressions as I transform them into an end-of-the-century finale for Arella’s Repertoire, my space for writing on the World Wide Web. This is where I remember both the century and the phase of my life that are drawing to a close. It’s also where I envision a fresh start. A blend of fact and fiction, my stories trace the paths I’ve followed to reach my latest stopover, where I sojourn now, a time traveler en route.

I glance around the space I’m learning to call home, a charming apartment in L.A. that I have all to myself. From my vantage point on the fourth floor, I have a spectacular view of the hills, and new horizons to explore. When I turn the other way, the scene becomes more personal and retrospective. I see unpacked boxes and stacks of books—mementos from the second half of the twentieth century. These lifelines to my past comfort me, especially the diaries, journals, and letters I’ve managed to keep. They also inspire my creative work across a range of old and new media.

Both sanctuary and stage, this space provided the setting for yesterday’s video performance, Still Mind, a New Year’s tribute you’ll have a chance to view soon, after it’s edited for the web. Meanwhile, I’ll try to piece together for you what I remember, the real and imagined backstory of my virtual excursions.

* A woman, let’s call her Arella, strolls around a spacious room she has all to

herself. Sliding glass doors open up the north wall, revealing a panoramic view of the hills beyond. Sunshine brings the space to life, playing off Arella’s golden brown hair and accentuating her blue eyes. As though leaving a trail, she removes her high heels and flowing cape, accessories that complement the iridescent gold dress she’s wearing, a dress made for dancing. The sheer fabric mirrors ambient colors, an impression enhanced by crystal earrings that reflect the light. A Tibetan flutist plays in the background. His spellbinding melodies induce psychic transport.

Before long, Arella’s twirling her way to other worlds, a prelude to choreographed dreams. Her age seems to change from moment to moment. An agile body suggests stories not written yet.

Soon, she imagines, her words will dance too. And then something outside attracts her gaze, halting her fluid dance midstream.

Arms outstretched, a faraway look in her eyes, she stares at the horizon, mesmerized by what she sees: A phantom vision? A dazzling light show? A supernatural entourage? She is strong. She has lived. Sacred music stills her mind.

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Twilight approaches and the room dims. She starts dancing again, more relaxed and carefree than before.

As though entranced, Arella gravitates toward the living room couch and lies down. A spread with shimmering, multicolored weaves envelops her. She falls asleep as the music fades out. The glass doors frame a brilliant display of color and light exploding in the distance. A period of calm follows and she drifts away, no longer relying on a script. The rest of her travels elude the video cameras, which have captured everything so far. Movies of another sort play inside her head. She is the dreamer. She is the dream.

While she sleeps, ghostly figments emerge from her body as though conjured by magicians of special effects. Each figment appears as a translucent ray of color. Volatile arabesques of rose, blue, plum, silver, and black come together and diffuse, one by one morphing into figures reminiscent of Arella at various phases of her life, from childhood to middle age. The colors of their costumes match the colors of their ghostly forms and distinguish the figures from one another, as do the costumes’ unique designs.

Thus transformed, the ensemble circle overhead—spectral dancers in flight. As they perform, another figure emerges from the sleeping woman: a brilliant gold ray morphs into an ethereal figure who resembles Arella as she appears on the cusp of 2000. The specter looks radiant in an iridescent gold dress and flowing cape that offset her golden brown hair and bring out the blue in her eyes. Her age seems to change from moment to moment, depending on the light and her speed of travel. With self-assurance, Dancer in Gold glides through space, a wise elder endowed with humility and grace.

“This way,” she says to Arella, entering her dreamscape. The other members of the female dance troupe chime in.

DANCER IN ROSE (young girl): We’ll guide you through territory you’ve visited before and introduce you to places you’ve never been. DANCER IN BLUE (teenager): In these realms, memories and imagination blend, and many channels of communication are open at once. DANCER IN PLUM (midtwenties): Just let everything float freely and you’ll be fine. DANCER IN SILVER (midthirties): And if you’re inventive, you’ll solve some mysteries. DANCER IN BLACK (early forties): Most of all, enjoy our renditions of your repertoire. DANCER IN GOLD (late forties): We hope you’ll join us.

Arella welcomes the dancers into her dream and takes off with her guides. As the

great-granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, she follows paths her ancestors could not have imagined when they fled Russian ghettos a century ago, even though she shares their desire to belong somewhere, and like her great-grandfather Daniel, a celebrated mystic, she ponders esoteric dimensions of space and time.


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On her latest excursion she encounters a wondrous theatre that concurrently

showcases scenes from the past, present, and future, reenactments of her own life. Great-grandfather Daniel would have loved this, she thinks, trying to experience the magic firsthand. No playhouse bound to the real world could replicate the free-floating, fanciful stage sets she discovers, nor could earthly performers interpret the repertoire as adeptly as the dancers she has followed here, to this timeless space.

On six separate stages, one for each dancer, Arella’s guides demonstrate their skills as choreographers and dramatists, recreating episodes from an ongoing story. Unable to take in everything at once, Arella watches one performer at a time, beginning with the youngest, Dancer in Rose:

A piano accompanist plays in the shadows as a ten-year-old girl performs on a

stage designed just for her. She wears a rose unitard and a short gossamer skirt with silver, blue, and plum sequins. She is slender, with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Inspired by her life in Miami, she keeps the mid-1960s alive by reciting diary entries that she recorded with care, celebrating a fifth-grader’s world.

DANCER IN ROSE: We had a little art lesson. For extra credit I turned in the Greek gods that I sculpted with soap. At the park Rita and I chanted witch verses. They go: “Ish ka bibaly, olton dolton, bo bo ba de tan dot an, wa bash ba do.” Everyone thought we were casting a spell.

In the territory she has claimed as her own, Dancer in Rose spins with abandon.

* On an adjacent stage, an obscure figure plays acoustic guitar, enlivening the

performance of a teenage dancer who wears a sky blue unitard. Around her slim torso flows a cotton skirt tie-dyed in rose, plum, and silver hues. Her sandy blonde hair is long and wild, her eyes a sparkling blue. Inspired by her contemplative notes, Dancer in Blue commemorates her high school years in Miami during the late 1960s and early ’70s.

DANCER IN BLUE: Astray one day in a dreamy cotton candy wonderland looking for a smile, we, gentle tiptoers, romped with auras of magic and sighed as the radiance waned. Power to the People!

One reflection leads to another, perpetually charging a body in motion.

* Nearby, jazz rhythms filter through the domain of a twenty-something dancer

who is immersed in a nuanced performance. She wears a plum unitard and a silk sarong with marbled rose, blue, and silver patterns. The costume accentuates her well-toned body and dramatizes her sinuous travels through space and time. As she moves, her light brown hair blows in the wind. Her blue eyes dazzle. It’s the mid-1970s. Back in South Florida after graduating from college, Dancer in Plum works through experiential layers her journal writing has shaped.

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DANCER IN PLUM: Maybe I need to live in equilibrium, taking only controlled excursions into any extreme. This way I would surrender to passion selectively, rather than giving in to emotional intensities that rock me into desperate madness.

Moving images start to shape my graphic world. The blank page acquires new dimensions, and my imagination opens to designs unforeseen. I work on a choreography of everyday rhythms. Dancer in Plum relishes her private space, where, under the influence of her

personal repertoire, she translates impressions with her body. *

Elsewhere, avant-garde musicians improvise. Their hypnotic minimalist score creates the mood for another performance unencumbered by the passing of time. Free to replay familiar scenes, a woman in her thirties defines a space that suits her style. She wears a silver unitard and a black silk skirt. A shimmering weave of rose, blue, and plum runs through the fabric. Her tousled chestnut hair is pulled back off her face, drawing attention to her blue eyes. At this juncture in the late 1980s, Dancer in Silver is living in a Midwestern college town and struggling to write her first novel. She considers where she has been and where she may be going, as her reflections suggest.

DANCER IN SILVER: I’m trying to collage a new map, to go places I’ve never been before. Intuition guides me. My tasks: unearth treasures from distant passageways; translate memories of physical pleasures into words. Subtitles peer through . . . mirror reflections.

No one can accompany me here, in contours designed for imagining. I transcend limits that get in my way, again and again. Absorbed in elusive scenarios, Dancer in Silver preserves traces of other worlds.

* In the distance, members of an international ensemble roam about a fantastic set.

They fuse Eastern and Western musical traditions. The group’s enchanting world music permeates the sanctuary where a free-spirited woman in her early forties inhabits a space she has remodeled for dancing engagements. Her sheer black gown reveals hints of the black unitard underneath. A silver necklace with assorted gemstones adds touches of rose, blue, and plum. Her long auburn hair falls loosely around her face, almost hiding her blue eyes. In Los Angeles during the mid-1990s and writing a screenplay, Dancer in Black invokes her own form of alchemy.

DANCER IN BLACK: Little by little, fragments of a life take shape, collaged reflections that look backward and ahead, a tribute to the in-between spaces one may occupy along the way.

I revisit imaginary havens, retracing pathways. Memory layers unfurl, a mad rhythm, a dervish pace.

I create a repertoire of virtual memories from which I will develop characters and scenes. I experiment with voices I have known or imagined. I play many parts.


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While Dancer in Rose, Dancer in Blue, Dancer in Plum, and Dancer in Silver perform solos on their respective stages, their avatars join Dancer in Black in her sanctuary. Members of the ensemble thus cross paths, enjoying their visitation rites. Music plays under the scene as Dancer in Black addresses new audiences, wherever they might be. She channels private visions into public spheres.

DANCER IN BLACK: I speak to you from a transitional space, an unmarked passageway. I share with you the sites I’ve visited and invite you to explore uncharted territories that lie ahead. Together, we’ll glimpse realms where obstructive boundaries melt away and new spaces of thought, feeling, language, and creativity appear.

(To the ensemble): I hope you’ll explore my sanctuary. You’re safe here. Encouraged by their host, the dancers invent rhythmic patterns. They work by

themselves and they collaborate. To their surprise, Dancer in Rose, Dancer in Blue, Dancer in Plum, and Dancer in Silver find openings to their private domains, spaces they call home. Through trial and error, they discover how to leave the sanctuary and how to return. Along the way they find a network that links all their home bases with one another. New routes appear. The dancers become fearless travelers.

* Dancer in Gold—who resembles Arella as she appears now—circles overhead.

She looks radiant in her iridescent gold dress and flowing cape. The sheer fabric reflects the colors of the other dancers’ costumes. Crystal jewelry enhances this mirroring impression.

DANCER IN GOLD (to Arella): Welcome to our magic theatre. Please drop by any time. We’re always happy to discuss the repertoire, whether you’re interested in the past, present, or future, terms that mean little to us but a lot to you. Arella’s repertoire assumes a life of its own with this remarkable cast, which

resists being fixed in any one form, whether on the page, on the screen, or in the mind. The performers embody stories in motion, characters transmuting, becoming extrasensory forces and colors dancing rhythmically in space. Evanescent designs. Fleeting impressions. Make-believe. Arella tries to grasp the role she’s playing in the dramas that unfold around her.

ARELLA: I imagine myself everywhere and nowhere. My thoughts flow and my work remains fluid, one project spilling over into the other always becoming something else. DANCER IN GOLD: Know how far to venture into the unknown—that’s the key. ARELLA (to ensemble): Thanks to you all, my next role takes shape. I envision myself as an agent of travel and psychic transport. I’ll specialize in imaginary places and secret passageways. I’ll conduct guided tours and design itineraries for other time travelers en route.

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The dancers slowly morph back into shimmering rays of color hovering over

Arella, asleep on the living room couch. The Tibetan flutist plays in the background. No longer visible, Dancer in Gold speaks from other realms.

DANCER IN GOLD: We leave behind traces of where we’ve been, entrée to a virtual journey that can be revisited—and reconfigured—at will. Now we’re all fearless travelers.

Homeward Bound (Posted December 2, 1999)

Lost in dreamscapes that recreate memorable scenes, I watch movies play inside my head. As the retrospective unfolds in strange temporal and spatial zones, I surrender to the allure of other worlds. Amid the real and imagined spaces through which I navigate, ephemeral scenes drift by. Rhythms and colors sweep me along. On the way I tap into my personal repertoire.

Once again I discover the spectral dancers, who have become my personal guides. Masters of flight, they enchant from above. Dancer in Gold, the senior member of the troupe, soars above the others and then they vanish, leaving her in the spotlight. Luminous, she undergoes metamorphosis, relinquishing a fixed identity. One by one she becomes the other dancers: Dancer in Rose (young girl), Dancer in Blue (teenager), Dancer in Plum (midtwenties), Dancer in Silver (midthirties), and Dancer in Black (early forties) come to life anew as Dancer in Gold improvises.

Adept at most forms of contemporary dance, she repeats the cycle several times, each variation more vibrant and colorful than the last. New passageways open. Through subtle gesture and inspired movement, she unleashes creative reserves. After several rounds, the nimble Dancer in Gold resumes her initial persona, and with a few flourishes of her own, she concludes the electrifying performance. Special effects diminish. She flies off, joining the troupe.

Now the dancers pass over territory I recognize. They fly effortlessly from South Florida to Southern California and back several times, following a circular route. The expedition takes only seconds. As though scouting locations for a movie or staging a play, the dancers plan my itinerary for the next phase of the tour. Destinations include Miami and L.A. By the look of things as I zoom in, the New Millennium remains several years away.

While exploring a stage of the world that remains in flux, I learn to decrypt secret messages. Leah, who made her debut in Visitation Rites, my first novel, returns to help. At the same time, she updates her stories, a blend of fact and fiction channeled through my own memories. Visitation Rites left Leah in 1980 when she was planning to move away from South Florida. You’re about to meet her fifteen years later on her first trip back. This is where my retrospective of the twentieth century begins.


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A native of Miami, Leah has gravitated westward after many stops along the way.

She passes for an Angeleno at this juncture in 1995. As you read, check out the hyperlinks I’ll be adding to the tales that she and the rest of the cast tell. (Look for highlighted passages, or go directly to lists at the end of each post.) Among other things, you’ll find leads to a variety of sources that address the characters’ cultural memories, which are shared collectively and documented across a range of media, including the web. These external sources complement the characters’ personal memories, which are preserved in Arella’s Repertoire. Besides the written narrative, there’s also a Multimedia Gallery, where I’ll be showing my latest video. Stay tuned!

If all goes well, I’ll be posting installments throughout the month of December until 2000 arrives. You’re invited to join Leah and me as we look backward to move ahead. After the first of the year, I’ll add a personal tour of the web based on our memory work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elayne Zalis, PhD, has an interdisciplinary background in writing, communications, and the media arts. She explores media in transition, a range that encompasses film, video, print, digital arts, and the web. She is interested in what artists and writers are doing and in what critics and scholars are saying. Her recent work focuses on personal and cultural memory. She lives in Southern California. Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming “Dear Diary” is part of a quartet that also includes two fictional texts, Arella’s Repertoire and Vagabond Scribe (Leah’s Backstory), and another work of nonfiction, VirtualDayz: Remediated Visions & Digital Memories. For additional background, see http://www.TheMemoryChannel.com/.

Documents

Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming "Dear Diary"