Here's an insane idea

Animation offers a certain liberation, a liberation from the usual collaborative alliances necessary to produce drama. I applaud these collaborations. However, as I've gotten older, such alliances require more and more time and energy ... how nice, I think, if I could do as much as possible myself. For a long time I thought of animation as such an alternative but there was a huge drawback. I have no drawing skill.

Well, Alice requires programing skill, not drawing skill, which takes me back to my youth as a math fanatic. My first publication was in a math journal, a number theory problem when I was a sophomore at Cal Tech. So I get it. And I want whatever I do to be driven by the writing, not the animation per se, so I only need to learn basic things.

I see that I can incorporate sound files into Alice. So here is my absolutely insane idea.

An animated chamber opera. After all, this is the ultimate dramatic form, as I've thought for some time, and even though I don't have the proper skill set to do it "right," I've been fumbling along as best I can. What if I incorporate the sound files of the chamber opera into Alice, let the characters "sing/say" the lyrics, and go from there? The point being, Can I tell a story this way? I surely am going to look into this more closely.

Meanwhile "The Adventures of Sarah Stalin" builds episodes and accomplishes two things: it slowly builds my programing skill set; it gives me an outlet from the way that S.P. and her supporters drive me crazy. No great accomplishment here but it serves its purpose very well for where I am now.

Alice is far, far more complicated and powerful than I've been able to explore yet. I have ordered a book on it, which I intend to go through this summer with enthusiastic discipline, the goal now being to see if I can put together an animated chamber opera, doing everything myself. Import piano files. Design worlds. Design characters. Let characters sing/say the lyrics, which we see as the sound files play. Fascinating possibilities.

And if this works, by the gods I may go back and write the chamber opera on the mayor I've had in mind!

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Onward.