On My Mind

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

University of Washington Abstract On My Mind Carol Anderson Shaw Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Assistant Professor Sarah Dowling School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Science On My Mind engages with complex issues of identity, love’s dialogue, and evolution of consciousness through story. The novella is set in an era of post-digital darkness, where transformation abounds as the world emerges into a new age of light, art, and love. In a pseudo-scientific time travel motif with a romantic trope reminiscent of Penelope and Ulysses, the text explores the liminal space between writer and reader, and the workings of narrative voice as bridge. We are in the mind of Isla, waiting at home for Eugene. Isla entertains suitors, while longing for her husband and falling in love with her writing. She is narrator and curator of the novella, which presents her multi-genre thinking, journaling, love letters, and body of artistic work, all to culminate in the premiere showing of her film, Clarity. Tampering with conventions, Isla’s form of storytelling conflates fiction with reality and tests the constructs of space and time. As she proclaims, things are not in order. The narrative presents her states of mind as she weighs personal decisions, runs reconnaissance, pursues archetypal quests, and writes. The makers and actors of her film intermingle on shifting planes of creation as the narrative interweaves the fairy tales, legends, novels, and real-life stories they live and tell. On My Mind is about creation. It is about love.