Project Three: Collaboration

One of the most rewarding parts of being creative is when you find someone else who is like-minded, and your ideas bounce off each other until they start sticking and turn into something bouncy and sticky and wonderful. My extremely talented boyfriend Olle and I are in this situation. We're blessed to be able to endorse our currently distanced relationship with mutual creativity.

Earlier in the year the two of us did a verbal scavenger hunt around the sky-tower one night, at the end of which we each had a list of interesting words and phrases we'd spotted or overheard around the city. We thought about writing a poem together or something but never really figured out what to do with them until two weeks ago when Olle sent me these preliminary character sketches, with the idea that I do some kind of written pieces to go with them (and he would then make a more developed image based on that). I've already done one for 'Free: Please Take Me', but that's it so far.

Our very vague ambition is to have completed word and image pieces for several of these, and to have some kind of connection between the characters. This is my creative focus for this week (at least in writing terms. I've also been picking up the ukulele again recently). However I also have to read two history books and write an essay on them, and knock out some Shakespeare and some Arthurian rubbish so I'm not going to go overboard. If I could do four more of these to a good standard, I'll be happy with that for the time being.

And here is my interpretation of Free: Please Take Me.

Elton stood behind the barrier with twenty or thirty others like him. They were mainly men, wearing suits just like his, with their hair combed back and their mouths in tight lines. Elton touched a hand to his own hair. It was messy from the wind, from when he got off the bus and the sudden rush of air and dust and noise splashed at his face and made him splutter.

            His sign was different from the others, but good different, he thought. All the others had three or four words in black pen like on the whiteboard at school. Which he never liked because it made squeaking noises if you weren’t careful and sometimes the pen had nothing left inside of it and barely made a mark on the board at all so there was no point. Elton’s sign just had one word – ELTON – in purple crayon, which never squeaked at all. He had clutched it tightly on the bus and all morning at school, with the side with the letters at his stomach so nobody else could see. They didn’t ask him anyway. They had stopped asking him things, mostly, except for jokes sometimes. Elton didn’t understand the jokes but the things he said always made them laugh.

            Now he held the sign proudly with the blank side to his chest and his name facing outwards so everyone could see it.

            The doors on the other side of the barrier opened and people started coming through in crowds, dragging noisy bags in one hand and little children in the other. Their appearance was sudden and startling and Elton rocked back on his feet a bit, glad he was on the side where nobody would shove him or shout something too close to his ears.

            The first people passed through with their children and their bags without looking at any of the signs, but Elton knew somebody would soon. A few more went off in the same direction as the others, all with the same urgency, and Elton watched some of them find their families and give them awkward hugs around the luggage. They were the people coming back from somewhere. But there were other people who were coming somewhere new, and they were the people who needed signs.

            The first one, a lady in high heels and a tight skirt, looked around for only a minute before she found her sign and walked off with the man carrying her bags behind her. He left his sign on the floor. Elton hoped he wouldn’t be expected to leave his sign on the floor.

            Then they started coming quickly, men and women in black, and they walked around in tiny steps while their eyes lagged a second behind them until they saw what they were looking for. Soon there was just Elton and a few other sign-people left. He stayed where he was, holding his sign high so everyone could see it. Soon enough, he figured, somebody would see it and know they had found what they were looking for and they would come to him and they would know each other just by looking, just like in movies. And they would go somewhere different, somewhere fun. He would wait around for however long it took.

            ‘Elton?’

            He blinked. He looked around to identify the source of the noise, but none of the people coming through the gates were looking in his direction.

            ‘Elton.’ He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around and saw Hester.

            ‘Why are you here?’ he said, and he heard the irritation in his voice before he felt it.

            ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. She pulled the sign out of his hands. ‘What the hell is this? Did you just walk straight out of school?’

            Elton felt the suddenly empty space in his hands where the sign had been and felt his fingers twitching and tightening now that they had nothing to hold onto. He felt himself towering over Hester and his head drooping down like an overripe fruit. His breath was loud and fast in his ears.

            ‘Elton,’ he heard again, and he saw Hester’s face changing. ‘I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m sorry.’

            ‘It’s okay,’ he repeats. ‘I’m sorry. It’s okay.’

            ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Let’s go home.’

And gooo.