Wilhelmina and the Wall

The other day I was riding my bicycle around Bremerton and listening to Willie Nelson. He had a song about a guy who was saying, "Hello wall,", etc. It gave me a thought about a person from ancient times saying that to a wall and the wall speaking back to them. And they got nailed as a witch. As I rode my bike I further thought out how that might work itself out and came up with a story.

I decided I needed to give Willie credit in some way, to give him an homage to his having led me to the idea for a new story. So I'm calling her Wilhelmina Nelson (Willie Nelson, okay?) and call it, "Wilhelmina and the Wall". Which, sounds stupid, considering the ensuing storyline. However, I figured if she's talking to a wall, how is that?

So I came up with a storyline making it science fiction. So the wall is real, and is a kind of AI talking back. But just to her. But how? Well, I have used this a few times. A scientist in the future has contacted someone in the past and the connection, in this story, is the wall.

The wall. An AI. And from there I built on that.

It's an exercise in creativity. How do we come up with these things? What is the source? How does it develop?

I was very absorbed by that at university and so I took a self-designed class to study creativity. I shot a video for my professor and kept a journal. it was my first produced video really. I spent three months shooting it, thinking about it and then turned in my journal and tape to my professor. I called the short film, "Tensions".

I felt it was a private thing. Something for myself and between him and me. And then I found out he was showing it to all his classes. It was a film built phenomenologically as that was my area of study with him, my department advisor in the psychology department.

I had perhaps made the mistake of putting myself in the video for a few seconds as I'd needed an actor and no one was around. I just wanted to get the scene done. So I did it myself. And then people on campus started coming up to me to discuss it. To offer their opinion.

It felt like standing in the middle of Red Square in the center of the campus by the fountain at WWU, I was stripped naked, exposed and vulnerable.

I did not like the "fame". That was my origin of preferring fortune over fame. If ever I were to have the choice.

But that's not what Wilhelmina is about. Or that film as that was about, "what is creativity?"

What I came away with was creativity is creation. The more you apply thought, history, technique, allegory, the more personal, the more universal it becomes.

Create? Start something. Build upon it. Logically, or perhaps illogically. But some common thread should exist, for most projects. Put effort into it. The more the better usually.

But getting back to "Wilhelmina and the Wall"? Time will tell...