Getting a lot of mileage out of one word
The poem itself:
Bound
BOUND.
BOUND.
BOUND.
bound
bound bound.
BOUND.
BOUND.
BOUND.
bound
bound
bound bound.
BOUND
BOUND
BOUND
BOUND
boundbound
boundbound
BOUND
BOUND
BOUND,
BOUND, Bound, bound,
bound bound
bound bound...L..
E....A....P
Splash.
Klunk.
How to read "Bound"
When you're reading "BOUND" in all caps, you are the human in chains. Feel your
chains as you read. Writhe against them. Strain. Chafe. You are BOUND.
When you're reading "bound" in lower case, you are the canine. You are trotting along
with idiotic excitement. Slobbering,
panting, happy.
When you see the BOUND
guy, you get
even more idiotic with excitement, you start jumping up
around the fellow,
as if you want him to play catch with you or something
and you don't get that the ball is IRON and the guy is BOUND.
Oh, but he is. Go back into BOUND mode. Writhe some more. You see
how cathartic this poem is? Your tormented self and
your idiotically happy self are both fully expressed.
Play around with it. Finesse it. No two readings
will ever be alike. Each one will vary depending
on what is happening in your personal life at the
moment. Sometimes you will be BOUND and sometimes
you will
be more bounding.
Yin and Yang. BOUND and bound.
Of course that last bit with the BOUND becoming bound in the same sentence has something
to do with the BOUND guy struggling free from his chains and transforming his BOUND into the running
bound which ends up in a leap. Super slo-mo: ...L...E...A...P
Antagonym
An "Antagonym" is a word that has two opposing meanings.
"Bound" can mean both "to leap forward or upward;
spring; bounce" and more ominously "a boundary, limit,
confined by bonds, past tense of 'bind'". And so we have the
core tension of our story,"Bound" in which we see the
struggle of one character (human), bound by rope and ball and
chain, with another character (canine), bounding accross the landscape
after a bouncing colorful ball.
An explanation of the cartoon
A human has been tied and left in the middle of a road, meditating
on his plight when the canine comes bounding down the path. The human is moved to tears by
the sight of such unbounded bounding. The canine continues to bound around the human,
encouraging, taunting. The human thrashes about in his ropes. The canine keeps bounding
around, stopping occasionally to pant. The struggling human rises to his feet. The footloose
canine does flips. The human double bounds (bounding while bound) down the road, dragging
his ball and chain (which adds heavy, crashing bouncing sounds to the bounding sounds).
By the time he gets to the end of the road, his ropes and chains are undone.
The road ends at a cliff and the human leaps
off.
Ending 1: (Shown in initial storyboard) The human is falling
down the cliff in surprise. He splashes into the water below. His
attached ball and chain bonk him on the head and bounce back up
like paddleball. As it bounces up, the canine comes diving down
the cliff, teeth bared, slicing through the chain. The two characters
are united and float playfully in the water.
Ending 2: (an extended version of ending one with super slo-mo
instant replays) Still on the clifftop, the human nears the end
of the road. He has begun leaping in addition to bounding (which
has an interesting effect with his attached ball and chain in terms
of motion). Each leap takes him higher and a look of delight radiates
from his face. The canine is frantically bounding around him as
if to communicate something important. The human doesn't notice
he is nearing the edge of a cliff! His ropes are undone and at the
beginning of his dramatic final leap, he breaks through them like
a runner going through a ribbon. Super slo-mo of the human leaping
off the cliff (L....E....A....P....) from several different angles
is interspersed with the bounding canine looking a bit concerned
and trotting back away from the cliffside to take a running (bounding)
start for its own leap. In mid human leap, the character realizes
he has leaped over nothing and is falling. Further in mid-leap,
he looks up to see the canine, teeth bared, diving down. Close to
impact, the canine crunches through the chain. All three entities,
canine, human, steel ball, splash into the water. Steel ball
sinks. Then the colorful ball comes down and bonks the human
and canine on the head. The ball floats and the human and canine
balance on it, floating playfully off into the sunset.
 For now we have these nice black and white scans. One day it will
become a crude animation piece. And then, a major motion picture
starring Heath Ledger as the ball.
|
