Carousel Wind Treatment

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

[To Find The Musical "Carousel Wind" Click on "Carousel Wind Act 1 Scene 1 to the right in the May 2012 section]

I was selling Magic Pens at a kiosk beside the Venetian Carousel at the Garden State Plaza and would often notice a girl in her early twenties being left by her parents on the same bench. She looked lonely sitting there watching the carousel — it made me wonder what was going through her mind day after day — so much so that I started writing a song about her. The main theme of song was to speculate on what she might be dreaming, that perhaps the wind generated by the carousel might carry her off with its phantom embraces. I suggested in the song that if you happened to see her at the mall to say hello to her, but hadn’t done so myself. So I said hello to her asked her why she sat at the same bench beside the carousel. She said that she liked to see the smiles on the faces of the children. The carousel was decorated with ornately framed vignettes of Venice, and each time it stopped a different scene would take the girl into a new dream world.

The action for Carousel Wind takes place at Piazza Ducale – in Vigevano, Italy. The main characters are Joy, the girl with the chestnut brown hair and Enigma, her imaginary love interest, a mime artists that wears a striped shirt, a figment of imagination perhaps inspired by the gondolier depicted on the Carousel. The animation begins with the camera rolling forward inside the archways of the Piazza towards the façade that resembles a carousel. Right in front of the façade, with a similar silhouette, a Venetian carousel appears as if in a dream. Joy, with a forlorn expression, walks in and sits facing the carousel.

The camera angle then shifts to a low shot from her side and a little behind so that she is half the frame with her face prominent from the side, and the carousel is whirling by. She is looking up at the children, her hair is blowing from the carousel wind and light is flickering on her face, as if projected from the carousel. The wind is drawn in meandering shapes, much like the ornate frames of the Venetian vignettes. Her frown gradually becomes a wistful smile, as if she is hoping for something. Close-up of stirrups being a star, then a windmill, then a star drawn on the end of a telescope, then an eye then the telescope comes away from the face and it is Joy. Joy dreams of walking along the beach, looks through her spyglass at a mime who accosts wearing a squirting flower. They fool around (the mime picks up a shell and puts it to his ear and blows water out his mouth) and the mime squirts her; then offers the flower, which she attaches it to her round straw hat… She dreams of floating in a gondola with the mime underneath an arched bridge… As she dreams families with children walk by in the foreground without noticing the girl. In another dream Joy is at the top of an arched bridge overlooking a canal in Venice. She is wearing the straw hat with the squirting sunflower and looking down over the stone railing. In her hand is a flower and she is dropping petals into the water below. The petals drop like tears, from above there is a reflection of Enigma and as the petal hits the water it shatters the image… In the final scene the camera pans down to the empty bench at the carousel with the squirting sunflower on the floor. A broom sweeps it up and puts it into a wheeled dustbin. Where the flower was is a shadow. The camera pans out and reveals it is a shadow of Joy and Enigma embracing…