Monday, October 6, 2014

Ice Through the Fire: My Google Maps Narrative

Ice Through the Fire is my attempt to create a noir-style fictional narrative within the realms of Google Maps focusing on a man consumed by the thought of this woman he has obsessed over for the past few months of his life. As a fan of old detective drama's such as Dragnet, I tried to emulate the dialogue of such shows through the use of short, broken sentences and abbreviated words. Each point on the map has been made in an attempt to give brief insight into the Man in the story, as well as the Woman he is chasing after.
When approaching this narrative, I didn't want to simply write a beginning-to-end storyline and show different places on a map. Instead, I wanted to take these real life places and try to imagine how they would feel back in a 1950's setting, hearkening back to the detective drama feel I was going for. Imagination is important with this as well, as what you're imagining when reading may not be what I was imaging when writing, and this is completely fine and what was intended in the first place.
Like I said, I didn't want to create a story with a definite beginning and ending. I wanted to write the story in a way that it could almost seem like an infinite loop, something that I hope seems apparent once you reach the "end."
From here on will be, I guess you could say, "spoilers," so if you would like to view the map before reading on, your last chance to do so is here. The main point of the man's story is his struggle with alcoholism, and his attachment to his flask is evidence enough of that. But hopefully what you find more subtle are the elements of the Woman, as well as the smells and sights the Man experiences. Having never been an alcoholic myself, I can't attest to the complete truthfulness of this, but from what I understand and from what I have read, it seems as though people under the constant grip of alcohol tend to distort reality to their liking, either consciously or subconsciously. The Woman is his ideal life, everything he dreamed of and chased after, which is the reason she is always just out of reach. The flowery scent and random encounters with people talking to him about his life are projections of his imagination onto reality. There is no flowery smell around to anyone but him, and people aren't really talking to him about this girl, but he still believes that they are.
Finally, Louie is sort of the "connecting light" at the end of the Man's dark tunnel. In the beginning we see Louie simply as the name of the bar, and presumably the bar's owner. This is to suggest early on that the Man frequents this place, that perhaps he is on good terms with the owners and buys a lot of their inventory. Towards the end, Louie is remembered as a person, not just a bar. By this point, the alcohol has completely taken over the Man's life and driven him even more insane than when he started-even in withdrawal- leaving him to want to retell the story of the Woman to Louie when he "returns home," almost like at the beginning of the story (the infinite loop).

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