the majesty of mayhem

I was reminded earlier this week of how truly jaw-droppingly beautiful scenes of death and combat can be, if done well, and I guess that realization is what sent me back to a script that had rotated to the back of the current crowd of "open" projects -- the challenge of penning a scene filled to near-overflowing with violence and blood and animal brutality committed by humans yet which still possesses a poetry and delicacy akin to romance.



So I spent the day finally putting to paper a cool early story moment wherein our hero and our heroine meet for the first time, and there is no dialog, and no love in any traditional sense, instead only violence and mayhem and gore and terror, yet at the end of teh scene the odd relationship between these two is clear and unshakable, even with no dialog or moments of emotional bonding. We start and end the scene with our hero admiring the peacefulness of gulls circling overhead, but where the image at the outset seems quiet and tranquil, at the end it seems tragic and final.

Of course, it helps to have some cool music swirling around in the periphery, and the magnificent sounds from Crouching Tiger somehow fit this mood and moment even though there is zero connection or similarity between that tale and the one I am spinning, and yet... there's an emotional component common to both: threads of love, and loss, and life, and death, and heartbreak, and honor, and impossible sacrifices.

I hope this thing bears fruit. There's too much of it already clear in my head for me to remain sane if this goes for nothing.

And so I dive back into a ballet of blood, dreaming of brutality and mayhem.

And I feel more than fine.
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old school B