Her Cutie Mark
Dreamed 2016/8/7 by Wayan
for Lauren Faust
THAT MORNING
Work on a soft sculpture, the Mertiger, a nearly life-size soft sculpture of a tigress with a furry dolphin tail. She has a mane of dreadlocks now, but I sew some more short ones for the front; I think she'll look cuter with bangs.
THAT AFTERNOON
In the afternoon, go with friends to see Shakespeare's The Tempest in Hinkel Park, Berkeley. Mike the driver gets lost, even though he's been here before. Why? He listened to riders with conflicting map-apps, rather than trusting his own knowledge of the Berkeley hills. As we wander, I feel hijacked by bad apps....
So we end up late and have to sit in back where I can barely hear--and it's Shakespeare, you NEED to hear clearly.
Still, the staging is fun--the troupe uses sails for backdrops, waves and weather, they dance and sing (my friend Nic Griffin is one of the musicians), the witch Sycorax is onstage as her strange backstory is told, Ariel's attendant sprites are visible too. Prospero's interesting--clearly unstable, benevolent one second then as snarling as Caliban--makes me wonder if his brother "usurped" his dukedom or took over to protect it. Caliban's played as a Caribbean woman. Her realm too has been stolen by a usurper: Prospero. Still, he relents in the end, frees the spirits and Caliban, lets his daughter Miranda enter the wider world...
THAT EVENING
I work hard on the text for Deer Vs. Pigs, a complex trio of furry dreams:
THAT NIGHT
A gifted girl, a groomed princess like Miranda in The Tempest, develops her talents to the point her Cutie Mark appears early. Apparently this world is like the My Little Pony universe; on the day when your find your life-calling, a brand declaring the New You blooms painlessly on your flank: a Cutie Mark.
I'm not clear how we could see the Marks, but we could. I know we were two-leg folks not four-leg, but I don't recall how we bared our Marks:
To illustrate the dream, I guess I'll have to pick one.
Or do I? Here, I'll draw all three versions of Miranda as Three Graces on a field of potential Cutie Marks...
Fur or not, clothes or not, in the dream you always showed your Cutie Mark--showed others who you are. Hide it, live in the closet? In Miranda's world that was just inconceivable!
Though visibility has disadvantages. In her teens, Miranda is kidnapped--and her abductors rely on her Cutie Mark to identify her as their target! And the mark reveals her special talents, so they know what tricks to expect. Escape's unlikely--her mark gives too much away.
But they forget--most teens have only recently won their mark; it defines them well. But Miranda was precocious--she won hers well before puberty. Just a few years, but a significant fraction of her young life. Even in the few years since then, she's been developing in directions her mark fails to show!
So both her kidnappers AND her rescuers define her the default way, by her Mark--and it's by now it's deceptive. Not false, but too narrow to reveal the full Miranda. She's going to escape, I know, using talents both her abductors and rescuers can see she lacks. But they're wrong; her Mark's out of date.
Do Cutie Marks change? If so, do they change fast enough to show the current you? Or do they always lag, lying a little? Seems like they do. Only question is, how much.
And does that timelag only fool jerks like kidnappers into thinking you're less than you are?
What if it fools you too?
NOTES
NOTE A YEAR LATER
I'm still convinced my that my lifework is just to do the art, writing & music I dream (because no one else seems to dream stuff like this). But I'm equally convinced the dream was right; my lifework, my Cutie Mark, doesn't reflect new growth. Like Miranda, I've lived quietly, reclusively, working away... when I want more. A wider world than my magic island. Have I kidnapped myself, mistaken my lifework for my life? What about love and risk, what about... life-play?
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