Welcome to day three of Just Jot It January for 2023. Today’s word is solo.
My mind first went to Hans Solo – pop culture has a powerful presence! But I have nothing bubbling to the top on that subject so I best move on.
Solo implies something done alone. Like a singing solo which I could never do. As the old folk were fond of saying “…she can’t carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it.”
Now my mind has shifted to writing. Thinking about dialogue. For you writers out there, do your characters talk to themselves? I mean, I talk to myself, and sometimes my characters do the same.
I had to stop and remind myself of the difference between a monologue and a soliloquy. In a monologue, the speaker is speaking to someone – another player or to the audience. With a soliloquy the speaker is talking to themselves.
Are you, dear readers, familiar with The Glass Menangerie by Tennessee Williams? In the final scene, Tom speaks to himself although some people do refer to this as a monologue rather than a soliloquy. He has left his family abandoning his mother and his crippled and painfully shy sister – much like his father before him.
I didn’t go to the moon. I went much further, for time is the longest distance between two places. Not long after that, I left St. Louis. I descended the steps of our fire escape for the last time and from then on, I followed in my father’s footsteps attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal. The city swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something that always came upon me unawares taking me all together by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I’m walking along the street at night in some strange city before I have found companions.
And I pass a lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. Windows filled with pieces of colored glass. Tiny transparent bottles and delicate colors like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then, all at once, my sister touches my shoulder, and I turn around and look into her eyes. (pause) Laura. Laura. I tried so hard to leave you behind me but I am more faithful than I intended to be. I reach for a cigarette, I cross a street, I run to the movies or a bar. I buy a drink. I speak to the nearest stranger. Anything that will blow your candles out. For nowadays, the world is lit by lightning. Blow out your candles, Laura. And so, goodbye.
I love the references to glass as a “shattered rainbow”, but now I ask myself, what does this have to do with the word solo? Ha! I guess this was definitely a stream of consciousness morning.
Written as part of Linda Hill’s JusJoJan.
Prompt word today (solo) submitted by Dar from Darswords.
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