THE MEDUSA BOAT by Sylvia Toy

A live action/animated videoperformance about depression.

Every summer I experience several 10-17 day episodes of mixed bipolar affect, mania and or depression. On June 18, 2019 while I was miserable with mixed affect, I wrote the following and decided to make a movie that is a metaphor for how I have felt nearly every summer since I was age 10:

“I woke up in a small boat on choppy waters, not remembering how I got there.

The water reflected moonlight like glimmers of hope. But hope disappears as soon as it glimmers in water as choppy as this.
It’s so absurd that here in the middle of the ocean one could remember hope just because the moon is shining.

Memory is so much more important when you’re stranded in the middle of your ocean. You need to remember who you are. But you can’t. You can’t touch yourself, your soul because you can’t find yourself even though you’re stuck with yourself in the worst way. You need to remember who you are but you can’t. Instead you remember like a record player that keeps playing the same album over and over all the worst things that ever happened to you and as many as possible of the worst things you ever did, regardless of whether you forgave yourself a long time ago.
You are stuck in a groove like the needle on a record player and you can’t find the thoughts you want. Geography is possibility and all you’ve got is a catatonic body that can’t move because it’s waiting for you to come back.

And the whole time a Medusa head hovers over you to make sure you know this is real and waiting for it to be over is inevitable."