"Waiting for Gadot," scene 3

A personal, explicatory scene. I won't say much here, because I want to save it for the autopsy.

Scene 3

Open scene.

[Curtain up on Carl in a room by himself. It appears to be a living room of a small apartment. He has a laptop on the desk in front of him, sitting next to a glass of water. He clicks a button on the laptop and then begins speaking.]

Carl: I think the thing that comics lack the most is sound. There’s a comics podcast that seems to reference this fact by being called “Word Balloon,” which seems like simply a comics term at first, but actually points out everything that’s different about comics and other visual media like television and media. A word balloon makes no sound, while a podcast is nothing but sound. To take the comparison further, comics have a real estate issue when it comes to sound: words are like buildings and the most important consideration is location, location, location. Where do you put the words you need to make the story function? You can’t just paper the art with text, because it not only slows down the book, but it literally covers what needs to be seen. [He bends forward and hits the same button on the computer.] Boring? Maybe try a more personal touch? [He presses the button again.] So I wanted to start my own comics podcast. To do that I had to practice getting used to my own voice—I like the idea of reducing myself to my voice, but I’m still alienated from my voice. We never feel like recordings of our voice sound right because somehow hearing your own words as you speak has some sort of feedback loop from your vocal cords through your mouth then back into your ears… [He hits the button again.] I don’t know… [He looks towards the side of the stage, making a wistful face. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.]

Enter Pandrio, Pasha, and Andrew. They walk around the stage as they speak.

Pandrio: “This is the way you wish your voice sounds…”

Pasha: “The little voice in my head won’t let me forget…”

Andrew: “I tried to pick his brains, still he wasn’t revealing, but I could feel the sense of panic in his voice…”

They exit.

Carl: It’s like having a song stuck in your head—whose voice are you hearing? Is it your own internal voice singing or are you imagining the actual song being heard, as the singer probably sings it better than you actually would… [He opens his eyes.] Maybe it started with this thought. I would catch myself lying in bed with a song stuck in my head and it seemed like it was coming from somewhere… Somewhere else… Then later I realized it wasn’t just songs in my head… [He sits up and hits the button another time.] One of the things I loved about comics was the way it controlled time and attribution. In comics, you never have to argue over who said what when, because it’s all there on the page (and, yes, I know, there’s a little wiggle room there when it comes to the “when”). Practically every argument I’ve ever been in in my life has at some point led to a debate over specific words used—imagine if you argued in a comic book and could just turn back the page to quote the previous point exactly! [He sighs.] It’s exactly what I don’t have here, because I’m not working from a full script to keep the normality of my voice… To make sure my words sound to myself like my own. That’s another of my concerns… [He sits back up and looks at the computer once again, but does not press the button.] Sometimes at night when I lie in bed I hear voices. Voices… in my head I guess. It’s almost like these characters show up when I close my eyes. How would you show that in a comic? Do you make the characters literal, show them walking around near my head, sometimes spouting song lyrics, did I say this already? It’s like when a song is stuck in your head, you can’t control it, but somehow it keeps on keeping on. Maybe I’m not thinking it through enough—maybe the page is simply my head… [he brackets his face with his hands] and it’s opened up like a dollhouse and inside it are all these people speaking. [He moves down his hands.] Is this normal?

Carl hits the button on the laptop again. He fidgets in his seat and appears uncomfortable. He takes a drink from the glass of water, makes a face, and sets it down. Then he hits the button again.

Carl: I don’t want to label it. I don’t know if it’s some kind of mental illness or just the sign of an overactive mind. I almost said “creative,” but I don’t know if I really am creative. When I was a little kid, my mom enrolled me in a building contest with Legos and I built… A wall. [He makes a wistful face.] A wall! It’s funny thinking about that these days… Everyone else built these incredible, um, things… Look, I don’t remember, but I built a wall (so memorable!), because I just didn’t get it. I built Lego models based on the directions. I liked being told what to do. I still do, but I used to, too. Sorry, stolen joke. Nervousness. But maybe I do mean “creative,” because I think I’ve always been creative with language, with words. Not with anything real! Just words, words, words! (That’s a twist on Shakespeare, mind you.) So maybe it’s a sign of an overactive, creative mind, hearing these voices in my head as I fall asleep. Maybe it’s a kind of dreaming. Maybe I’m such a non-visual person that I dream in language… [He sighs and then he laughs.]

Carl: Non-visual. Comics. Idiot. Hm, let me explain. I am enough of a visual learner, I love visuals, and I try my best to appreciate the art in comics, but yes. Non-visual. It’s really hard for me to construct visuals in my head. In elementary school the teacher used to say “imagine you are at the beach, looking out over the water,” and I would try. And I would fail. Which, admittedly, was uncommon for me at school. I was good at school, but I could never really do this—visualize in my imagination. Maybe that’s why I like comics—you don’t have to do the visual part. Yeah, that seems right; for example, Michael Chabon is a novelist who wrote a novel about comics creators, so people in comics know him a lot. I’d actually read Chabon before comics was my life, so this should be a match made in heaven. And then with that book about comics creators, Kavalier and Clay, he moves into third person and for some reason, all of a sudden, I can’t read him. I’ve tried and failed. Funny, failure, again. Failure, comics, me… This podcast. [He pauses.]

The pause is so long it needs an extra line. It’s awkward to imagine it being taped.

Carl: This idea of people talking to you is what writers say a lot, that they write to the point where the characters can take over and speak for themselves. Not something I’ve ever felt, which might just be a negative comment on my skill, but think about that… It’s scary, isn’t it? All these people inside you trying to talk, trying to speak up. And here you are, yourself, waiting for a real human being to show up in your life. Failure, comics, me, this podcast… Yeah, that seems about right. [He drinks the rest of the glass of water at once, stands up, walks to the side of the stage, turns off the light, and exits.]

From the other side of the stage, the Anthropologist walks out.

The Anthropologist: What if we only had silent film. Throw away the words. Precision, gone; all’s left is mood. Moody mood. [Miming a cow.] Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

End scene.