salamanderkings

Tide #9: [Inventor’s Series: Leonardo Da Vinci]

The most developed of my inventor’s series turned out the first one, my idea for Leonardo Da Vinci.

In thinking about tide for creatives and how tide shows up in the sunshine at all the eureka moments, imagine:

Ancient Greece, dusty city: a young boy is sitting at the edge of the waterworks. In almost waterpark fashion, water sloshed off the aqueducts as all the women are wash their clothes all around him.

As he is sitting on the rim of the baths, admiring all the women, idling beneath the  giant wooden water wheels and splashing water as it is drawn upwards by a vertical Archimedes’ screw, he (non-verbally) wishes, if only there was a way his young inventor self could become noticed.

So, as he looks to the sky dreamily, his vision focuses and he realizes he is gazing on a giant Archimedes’ screw. In golden glory, the water drips in slow-motion and sunlight, and as the camera angle shrinks forward to rush in on a close up of his face, he lights up and in classic fashion, he shouts Eureka! 

In the next scene, the crowd of tunic-ed women carrying tunics in wicker baskets with Tide in them clear away to reveal our young inventor nodding satisfactorily as he turns a wooden crank and it is revealed that by turning the Archimedes’ screw sideways, he had invented a sort of Roman-esque version of the washing machine.

Tide! One of the women sets it down beside folded laundry in a wicker basket, in a close-up, with the haze of activity going on behind it, the boy says, “Yeah, it’ll do that to ya.”

[The Tide Effect]

[credit to Archimede’s Eureka! cartoon go here:]

Tide #10 Tide + Thomas Edison

[Scene:] Thomas Edison napping in the grass, on a blanket spread in the semi-shade in Menlo Park. A peaceful day, he watches clouds and listens to the trees.

As the clouds pass overhead, they evolve to take on many forms. The first is a typewriter, the succeeding ones are perhaps, slightly more advanced future great inventions that he does not recognize. By the fourth, he sees one that in some way reminds him of Tide and Eureka!

The lightbulb lights up. He shoots up, it shocks him. Ow! Thomas Edison rolling off camera down the hillside. Shorts the power out (sparks can be seen falling from the primitive electrical lines in the distance).

[End:] He stands up. And in a frizzled, Einstein-esque way he sets down Tide and says “Yeah, it’ll do that to ya.”

And passes out.

[The Tide Effect]

Tide #11   Tide +Mark Twain

[Scene:] Mark Twain on a bench.. is asked by his wife to white-wash a fence in the background…?

Or: Twain has to wash clothes. His sleeves rolled up, it is grueling work and with the river rushing not far away, he looks down at his washboard in disgust.

….not sure where it goes from here, but a woman walks by,..somehow he runs up to her and with a bottle of Tide, and she says no, and he convinces her that it is not a chore, it is her privilege to test this new product out….

[End:] On a bench, with a book in his lap, he pulls the pipe out of his mouth and says, “Tide. Yeah, it’ll do that to ya.”

……………………………………………………………     …………….    ….

[Postscript:] Clip: End of Scene: Crazy Twain waving crazily on a get-away raft as he floats down-river.

Tide #S8: Tide + Picasso 

Swirling clothes transfixes the child.

Child is Picasso. Picasso

puts some clothes in the

washing machine. Watch

the colors swirl in hallucinogenic

Invents cubism. The young painting.

“Tide. Yeah, it’ll get you.”