Hard to say what, exactly, as ever but today’s photographs were chosen because they made me think about things the girls share, Melody and Thea. Perceptions; projections; the things I don’t know about them yet, and a few things I do. For example, the first thing Melody ever says to Thea is, “I like your hair,” and it’s so light, so sweet, the comment, her voice. In that moment, and from then on, Thea sees her, in her mind’s eye she wears bifocals. The Melody Thea sees is not much different than the girl Thea sees when she looks at herself. (Well, give or take some bad fashion and styling, for which Melody’s mother is to blame.) But to the world at large, Melody is a girl confined to a wheelchair, strapped to her chair like life’s got her in a five-point-restraint, due to the fact she has no control of her body.
What’s most important to me about Melody is that she’s not a victim. The only way to make her real, to make their relationship ring true, is to create two very real, completely fallible fifteen-year-old girls. Otherwise, the chair, Melody’s paralysis, it’s just a couple of cheap props. Deus ex machina, indeed.