Mystery

To unravel a mystery involves many choices, decisions, and persistent questions. But to unravel an historical one requires another set of problems regarding where even to begin. How to know what elements are important enough to pursue?

Phantom’s opening scene is shadowed with possibilities, all coated in shades of gray. All the viewer has to lean towards is the two interested bidders, so seemingly out of place in the opera house mausoleum. Yet they must be there for a reason. They have obviously chosen to attend this auction despite adverse conditions.

When the elderly man and woman vie for the same item, they repeat their initial respectful nod. Yet they still choose to bid against one another. So the mystery is not between them as a relationship, but is held somewhere within their mutual desire for the musical toy, a commonplace item.

It is such a deliberate purposeful action that makes clear choice will be a major theme in the story about to unfold. The atmosphere of the first scene is ominous, one student noted, but it does not “yet have the measure of how choices effects the characters.”

Only a beginning hint, resting in a child’s battered toy.

Journal Prompt

Make a list of old-fashioned toys such as the ones that every generation has enjoyed. For example action figures have longevity, even though once they were regimental tin soldiers and now may be space aliens.

Choose the least likely from your list and place it in your antagonist’s room or suitcase or deluxe office. How incongruous is it to an acquaintance. What questions does he wish he could ask?

Memory

Memories are often like torn spider webs. You follow the thin thread a little unsteadily and then suddenly there’s an open space. What’s missing? You look down to the next tier of strands, or perhaps up, hoping for a closed portion, but the ends straggle in the emptiness.

It’s a muddle, like an early morning gray fog that shifts around you in swirls.

Phantom of the Opera’s opening scenes, shot in black and white, give the same sense of movement, as different objects fade in and out of highlight with different degrees of shadow. Why is it important to remember that particular item? As the camera light passes over each object it further shades them like a passage of time. One student commentated that; “there are shades of gray in all of life’s stages.”

So when we look back into memory, to gauge our progress or to find a foothold for the future, sometimes uncertainty hangs in wisps like the spider web. And then a slight flush of air pushes another strand into view—just over there—just near the empty space. Now comes the decision. To jump, or not.

And suddenly the image is blazing with color.

Journal Prompt

1. Choose a turning point memory in your own life, or for your character. Write it up with as many details as possible. Don’t worry about overwriting it. Pour in sensory specifics.

2. Now color code the sensory highlights as if you were filling in a stained glass window or a paint-by-number. Which color is predominant?

3. Now re-write as a scene capturing that particular focus.

Maps

Emotional maps are unique, even from within a shared experience. Have you ever reminisced over a family incident or vacation, and be astonished at the different highlight memories? The geographical location was identical, but the perspective diverse. Or discussed a memory that to you is almost as vivid as the day it occurred, but another family member shrugs with no recollection at all?

The opening scene in Phantom of the Opera sets up the common physical map ground of emotional experience, first present and then past. It is a bleak day. The access route to the opera house is cold, wet, and icy. The elderly need assistance. And once inside the interior proves even more hazardous. There is no shortage of concrete physical metaphors in the decayed building. One student in the discussion remarked, “I saw it also as the future being the death of the past.”

Upon arrival the elderly bidders nod to each other with respect. In that moment they acknowledge their common ground for being present to this auction. And then both choose to bid on the same item. Ignoring what to the outsider might be considered art works or antiques when presented, they focus on a battered, tarnished child’s common toy, a monkey that plays cymbals.

Both want it and keep raising the bid for the seemingly worthless item. And then they pause to look at each other. Sorrow etches their faces. And the woman acquiesces, as she recognizes in him a deeper need, an emotional map that needs closure.

Journal Prompt:

1. Take a humorous circumstance that your character has experienced, and retell it from the future looking back at least forty years. What stand s out in vivid recall?

2. Repeat, but now use an emotionally difficult decision.