I’ve started work on a story for a second rock opera, tentatively called “Violet”. I’ve wanted to write a show loosely based on “Pinocchio” for a couple of years now, with a darker, magical perspective. The idea of an artificial person is somehow deeply resonant with being alive in the digital age.

After nearly a year of searching for an English translation of the original “Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi, I found an illustrated hard back edition at a garage sale in Waterman, Illinois. In the original, Pinocchio is much more like a possessed puppet than the innocent dreamer…much more like Chucky than the wide eyed child from the Disney cartoon. So I’ve been reading that and I’ve been reading “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly. The predicament of the “created” is similar between the two stories: they yearn to be human, to be like the one who created them. Pinnocchio is full of incoherent, almost sadistic, fairy tale zaniness. “Frankenstein” oozes with decadent 19th century gothic verbosity. Shelly uses the word “wretch” or “wretched” every other sentence. It’s…..amazing.

In “Violet”, the creature is inspired by both of those characters. It is made from non-human parts as well as human parts. Violet, the creature, is created as a substitute for the Creator’s lost child. In this role, Violet takes on a supernatural existence, and becomes the bearer of the sadness of the world. I’ve written out some of the scenes in the story in prose. Here’s one of the first ones I wrote describing Violet. In this, “She” refers to a neighbor of the Creator. Pardon my prose…I’m a songwriter:

She enters the workshop: slow and slowly sketching a photograph for her keepsake memory. The frame of the building: poured concrete columns and arched celing stretch up and about to envelop the place in manmade synthesis of rock. Lights dangle: strung up at the neck and left to die uncounted deaths.

Dust covers cover everything and keep all things from dust. Heavy things, like the machines used to cut steel and brass and those used to bend it to the will. Generally this place is gray and all things within are similarly lacking in pigment.

She spies what looks like a hospital bed, or one from a morgue, occupied by something massive. The bulk of it seems to cause such a burden to all that supports it, that it is a mystery that the Earth itself doesn’t cave beneath it. Intrigued, she approaches. After examining, she sees that it is a person, or, rather, some sort of oversized mannequin, covered by a linen shroud, nearly 8 feet in height. She realizes that, although a giant, the thing’s mass is not attributed to its physical bulk, but implied by the fact of its existence. To look at it closely is to see that the burden of its weight bears not on all around it, but that this thing is like Atlas, encumbered by the weight of the world; it alone balances the woes of the Earth, and all sadness and shame are focused upon it.

She removes its shroud and sees that it is simultaneously hideous and beautiful. An artificial being built from steel and costumed in decaying flesh. Its features suggest man and woman, but belie the soul of a child.

Her heart is moved to an increased pace as she witnesses this thing. She feels her own shame vanish. There is no reason to wallow in self pity over her own faults when, here, she beholds this entirely faulted thing.