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Friends in Minneapolis included me in the development of a theater and dance production inspired by the short story "At Daybreak" by Italo Calvino. I created three storyboard images and my own creation myth. Sadly, the performance never saw the light of day, but I’m still very fond of the contributions I made in the process.
It’s obvious there was a time when words didn’t exist - when humans were very different, they did whatever they needed to do - they co-operated and competed but without thinking about it. All their behavior was motivated by the reality that they wanted to survive and be satisfied.
The first word came from a man, and it was said to a woman. When this man first saw this woman, he was overcome with feelings of desire, admiration, and longing. Naturally, he envisioned the first future that had ever been imagined. And his head started to fill, and his mouth started to become full as his mind became full. he felt his tongue swell, and he struggled to breathe. As he gagged, he held out his hands and spat into them the world’s first word - a shining sphere, not unlike a pearl. He knew what he needed to do.
This man sought out the woman he had seen, and he handed this dense, round word to her. Of course, the moment it was in her hands, she felt the same swelling in her mouth, and she spat the next two words into her hands. And they knew, as they held these pearls of thoughts, what they needed to do.
They took the thread from a passing spider, and strung the words onto it. The woman wore the words, and whenever anyone saw them, they spat their own words - sometimes only a single word, sometimes five or six. And as people began to spit pearls everywhere, it became necessary to set aside time to sit together, and string these pearls into sentences. It was customary to exchange these lines of words, and to wear and carry them - so that people could remember what was said to them. And as they sat and adorned each other in these necklaces, the weight around the people’s necks crushed their tails, and their tails shriveled and fell off.
And that’s why we don’t have tails, because we sit down and take time to exchange sentences.