I just had an inspiration for another series of collages and related stories. It is called "Missing Luggage". It will probably take a week or so to set up (lots of work on the table at the moment), but hopefully it will be worth the wait. The idea stems out of a dream I had this morning,
The dream takes place in some terminal (border crossing, bus terminal, airport) where a mixture of people are given the task of identifying and claiming their luggage from a large pile of missing luggage. No one is allowed to leave the room until all pieces of luggage have been identified. The mystery is, all people in the room believe they checked in one piece of luggage, but they also, unknowingly, brought one more piece of hidden luggage along as well. On each luggage there is a tag “now” or “then”. Depending upon their traveler's frame of mind, they are willing, even eager to claim one piece of luggage. Conflicting emotions arise when each passenger finally realises, or is forced to claim, the second piece of luggage.
I think that this is a great idea, and I think you'll have a lot of fun and creativity with it.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions: Rather than the arbitrary "no one can leave till everything is claimed," which sounds either government-gone-wild, or science fiction-y to me, you might be able to think of an incentive(s) for your characters' claiming the secondary pieces.
The outside of at least some of the secondary pieces might look very different from their contents.
In the US, the phrase "emotional baggage" or just "baggage" is used sometimes as a casual term for those emotional issues we carry around.
Some of your characters might find that they need--and perhaps can get--help from other characters in picking up, carrying, or disposing of their stuff; others might not.
I can imagine that some luggage and/or its contents might change, or even disappear, on being exposed to daylight, or the view of other people!
I don't know how you'd make use of, or play with this phrase, but the second luggage pieces are probably really carry-ons! Maybe an incentive for some passengers is something to do with the idea that since all the passengers checked them and paid fees to do so, now they can get refunds when they claim them, because they were really carry-on. Or maybe the incentive to claim or identify them is the idea that the passengers, even if they don't immediately see which one is theirs, have a strong emotional feeling that if they don't pick up their own, they'll be leaving behind something that they want/need/long for/vaguely recall was important at some point.
I think you have a great idea! I look forward to reading more.
This really sounds like a great idea.
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