Chameleon is the story of twin souls who have incarnated through different passages of time, reunited in the present day millennium of transformation. Under the alignments of universe, lovers find each other in the strangest of lands in the times in this reincarnated love story about how love unbinds us from time. A handsome American astronaut, Nicholas Osborne, travels to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. His quest is to find his mission in life. He longs to meet his twin flame but his hopes have been dashed. His final destination at Jerusalem coincides with his meeting with a fellow American journalist, Savannah Lancaster. The people of Israel have spoken legends about the journalist betrothed to a South African Freedom Fighter. They meet at a gala, a night before the pilgrimage. Without hesitation, Savannah has a deep admiration for Nicholas. She follows the young man to his pilgrimage. During their pilgrimage, the bonds they share collide. A young American born blind chaplain, Harvey Garland, guides them. He explains the idea of why two souls get thrashed inside other eras to return to each other. Their mission is clear. Love conquers all, even death. The tourist begins his parables of love as he tells them the story of two lovers’ cursed to reincarnate until they unlock their barriers that hindrance their love. The tourist explains how everyone is born with a book; it knows exactly when you are born and when you die. We all have twin souls or soul mates that we can’t live without. As the stories come to an end, the journalist and the astronaut realize even though they were meant to be because of curse, nothing can change their love for each other. Their love becomes a struggle when Savannah’s fiance is captured in the blood lands of the Sudan. Savannah is called to duty as she must forgo the conflict of interest in order to report the war in the Sudan. Nicholas and Harvey join Savannah to rescue her fiance, even when his love for the journalist becomes his unbearable curse. Savannah is confined to the confusion of what is humanly right or what is spiritually manifested destiny.
During the lovers evolution of universal love, Harvey’s four parables: The Curse of St. Clementine, Gypsy, Under the Canvas Skies, and The Crescent’s Crusade, reveal the answers to questions Nicholas and Savannah have been striving to the find the answers to. Their curse of love comes from what is right to the world and what is right to them. The answers lie in the evolution of time and space and the tangible emotions that collide in them.
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I grew up watching Disney films when I was a little girl. The first film I saw that opened my eyes to the world of films as Disney’s 1989 classic The Little Mermaid. When the The Little Mermaid was released, it had be 23 years since the death of the company’s founder and patriarch, Walt Disney. After his death on December 5, 1966, the company saw a decline in the quality of its films and in their box office receipts. Before the 1960’s, the company retired its use of hand ink cells and segued into the art of xerography which debuted with the success of 101 Dalmatians.
In 1989, the tale of the feisty red headed mermaid with the voice of an angel and a rebellious streak come to the multiplex and it was the first Disney fairy tale to be produced since 1959’s classic Sleeping Beauty. I was four when I discovered Ariel for the very first time. My eyes widen and my jaw dropped as I was sunctioned to the screen as Ariel flipped around the wonder dreaming of something much more than a life of anonimity in the great waters. She wanted to explore what was out there.
I remember that day very clearly. I was four years old I was playing with my Barbie dolls and when I first saw Ariel, I wanted to emulate her. I wanted to escape the world I lived in because like me, she felt stilted in a world that can offer so much more. From the outside world, we could say Ariel was just another spoiled rebellious teenager but to me she was not . She could not allow herself to become another drone living under the rules of people who did not stimulate her growth but stipend her creativity to be who she really is. When Ariel sang reprise of her signature song, “Part of Your World,” I scampered towards the floor and glued my eyes on the television set. I feel in love with movies. I did not want fall in love with a man to be a part of his world. I fell in love with the art of film and I wanted to become immersed into it. I knew my destiny lied in making art in the form of the arts as a result of Ariel and I owe my life to Jodi Benson because with her voice, it awakened me to the possibilities of going beyond what people expect of me. Listening to her voice makes me feel euphoric, brand new, as if I were on another world flying high above me. I thank Ariel for rescuing me and allowing me to see my full potential as they artist I will become.
The Little Mermaid is the mother of Renaissance animated feature films in the Walt Disney Company. It single-handedly revived the company, saving it from bankruptcy in the eighties. The Little Mermaid gives birth to its first “feminist” princess, Ariel. Unlike Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora before her, Ariel is not complacent. She does not sit around her hidden cauldron and sing to be a part of the world she wished to live in. Her dream is to be human and feel the need to conquer instead of allowing the world pass her by. She is a proactive figure in the movement of regaining independence. In the other fairy tale films, the women had to be rescued in order to escape the confinements in their lives.
In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is an independent rebellious teenager who dreams of living in the human world. She feels as if the ocean traps her. For the first time, it is Ariel who saves the prince. She is his savior and his only hope. Because the film is about Ariel’s escapades, we do not go inside Eric’s mind but he is a lonely man who dreams to find someone like him who shares his ideas. He does not want to marry a woman to make her a princess. He wants to marry a woman for love. The film’s center is salvation. Ariel and Eric are the saviors to each other. To truly understand Prince Eric, the film should have had a more complex understanding of his character. He is an interesting young man being consumed by the voice of this woman and the girl he sees before him. He cannot comprehend that the girl he’s falling for is in fact the girl he has been thinking of. The voice becomes his trap, his unhappiness.
Ariel’s altruism is that she believes the world could never be an evil place because humans like Eric exist. She wants to believe that good still exist even when we are among such cruelty. John Musker and Roger Clemmens created such a serene world where humanity has not been tampered. In the iconic scene after Ariel rescues Eric from the shipwreck, Ariel kneels before the rock and sings from her heart the words, “I don’t know when/I don’t know how/But I know something’s starting right now/Watch and you’ll see/Someday I’ll be/Part of your world.” The words of Howard Ashman and the composition of Alan Menken and the beautifully innocent and venerable voice of Jodi Benson was the centerpiece of the movie. It defined the movie’s theme of fighting to make your dream become a reality.
Alongside Ashman, Menken, and Benson is the extraordinary animation of Glen Keane. The eyes are the windows of one’s soul. Ariel’s eyes are filled with determination. She is going to be heard. She knows her dreams to live above the ocean is where she was meant to be. Dreams occur when we fight for them. Keane draws hunger in Ariel’s eyes. In the first “Part of your World” song, Ariel swims towards a French Baroque painting and sings, “What’s a fire/And why does it/What’s the word/Burn.” The painting was The Penitent Magdalene by Georges de la Tour. The painting has similarities between Mary Magdalene and Ariel. Both of them are rebellious women looking for a savior. Magdalene sees that in Jesus. He saves her from her pain. Ariel confides Eric because she believes he will save her. The same can be said with Eric. Eric is a delicate wallflower who is a mere puppet for his handlers. Ariel is his escape from this limbo he has created for himself. In essence, they needed each other for salvation.
The Little Mermaid is loves story about intermarriage. King Triton declares a racial divide between man and merman, calling them barbarians who eat them. The film plays out as a modern day animated version of the 1967 masterpiece, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Sidney Pottiere. Ariel retaliates against her father’s harshness. She declares she is sixteen years old and not a child. He indeed becomes too violent with his daughter when he destroys the cauldron, leaving Ariel irrational. She has nowhere to go as her life is not meant to be a mermaid. She wants the freedom of the world above her. Triton, on the other hand, is not a bad guy. He has anger and control issues. He later recognizes he is too hard on his youngest daughter and that is why she pushes him away from her life.
His irascibility leads Ariel down the path to Ursula, the Sea Witch. Ursula is the notorious villain banned from Atlantica for cunning ways. She uses black magic and sorcery to her destruction of the ocean while her biggest opponent, Triton, uses white magic. Disney is once again using magic to create the difference between good and evil. Ursula represents the Devil in the story. She plays the role of used car salesman type in the song “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” She negotiates with Ariel in taking her voice in order to get Prince Eric. Ursula uses Ariel as the pawn to destroy Triton and his Atlantica. Watching the women’s algae slaves fear her, Ariel is vulnerable but signs the contract that makes her Ursula’s permanent tool. To ensure her dreams will come true, Ariel sells her soul to the devil. Ariel’s optismism despite the evidence bestowed upon her is weary. This film shows us that we should be practical no matter how much we want our dreams to come true. Ursula outwardly tells Ariel that if she cannot kiss Eric in three days, the mermaid belongs to her. She tells her that Ariel is only a body and face. Her voice, the tool that makes Ariel unique (besides her luscious red hair), will not be missed. Ariel has her face and can move her body and men have a disdain for women talking. Ariel loves Eric so much that she is willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their true love. This reoccurs later when Eric is vulnerable. He is blinded by the illusion of this voice that he is willing to believe Ursula is in fact the girl that saves him. She hypnotizes him in order to destroy their love. The voice is the bond that marries Ariel and Eric and unifies the humans and merpeople.
The Little Mermaid is the reason I wanted to become a filmmaker. When I was three years old, my mother put me The Little Mermaid VHS. I was bemused by the video. Then I saw Ariel, lying on the sand, sing “Part of your World” (Reprise) to Eric. I felt Eric’s urge to learn about this creature. Only my creature was the film itself. I wanted to become one of the film’s many pupils. I hung tightly to the floor as I was captivated by Glen Keane’s creation of Ariel who sings to her prince her desire to be a part of his world.
February 2008 was the year that changed my views on reincarnation. I was watching a Brazilian mini-series called Alma Gemela which was the otherworldly love story of a wealthy florist in Sao Pablo and his bride, a prima ballerina. The young bride confides in her seemingly kind cousin who resents the ballerina for living in her shadow all of her life. Her cousin falls in love with the florist and when the prima ballerina gives birth to her son, her cousin comes to live with them as the family nanny. Consumed with hate and and envy, she sells her soul to the devil and with her mother and jilted lover, she murders her cousin at her comeback recital.
As she travels to the white light, she rapidly descends back to her earth as her twin soul tearfully screams for her return. The beautiful dancer’s soul is placed inside an indigenous Indian woman whose mission in life is reveal the truth of her last life’s grizzly murder and release the soul of her twin flame, the florist.
Because of this miniseries, I was compelled to uncover the truth about myself and so I meditated and from the meditation, I began the planning sessions for a very young new film called Chameleon. In the initial plot, I wrote I wanted to reinvent these fairy tales that have very famous Disney incarnations and create a modern story that interweaves my renditions of tales. Here is a the original worksheet I used.
At first, I wanted to used seven stories that have shaped and molded my life and that I wanted to recreate. In the end I decided to make my versions of the following films:
Aladdin
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Sleeping Beauty
Peter Pan
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
This is one of the original sheets I planned:
The original plot for Chameleon reads like this:
Through the periods of fantasy and reality, two doomed lovers forage through their lives to be with each other. They are tantalized at touch, for when the weave, they depart from their world. A curse brings pulls them to back together only to separate them at sporadic timing. They are sunk into whirling dimensions. Their old bodies are food for the soil between the grasses only to know that their souls do not rest. They travel along with the passages of time. Their souls reincarnate in unusual faces but their love is ageless. As the fire burns bright, the curse does not die. In whatever circumstances they fall into, “To death do us apart” fights the urges of their bodies of desire.
The night I planned this script out, something was different. Earlier in the passage, I wrote about my infinity for the Disney film The Little Mermaid. The night I began to write the planning sheets for Chameleon, I had a very transforming dream. This dream was the catalyst to my realization that the characters that I was about embark on writing were in fact not very far from the mission that my ascending masters have sent me here on Earth, my mission this life time and all my lifetimes. I realize as much as I refused to fall in love when I was growing up was slim to none because I was born with another soul who when he was born, he called me to be conceived. I was born within him much like he was born in me and it is important that in 2012, the year of transformation, our souls begin to cleanse the karma and repair itself so when we meet, we are perfect.
The first dream I met my twin flame, we were in a yacht sailing across an unknown location. The sun was setting and the sky was beautiful. The sky was full of scatted sepia clouds with a sedated blue mixed with and orange-yellow hue much like the picture hear:
We were wearing matching clothes, a white button down shirt/blouse and khaki shorts. He was stirring the yacht named The Mermaid with a insignia on the yacht. It was ours. I love mermaids and the idea of being inside a ship named after the very thing I love startled me. I held in arms a child, a four month old baby boy dressed similarly like us. The man walks over to us and lovingly plays with his newborn child. His ever changing greenish hazel eyes were misty and full of wonder. His soft porcelain skin, scruffy well-groomed beard, and dark brown hair a swooped bang that is lifted off his rather large head. Although his head was bigger than I normal, he was so handsome, almost beautiful with very delicate features such as his feminine nose and soft red luscious lips. His head was proportioned to his body. His appendages were short but firm and strong. His tattoos had stories written on them, almost as if he has eulogized people who are important to him. He wears his heart on his sleeve. His emphatic intuition allowed him to feel every little tingle within me. His eyes glistened with the notion that he has found his divinity within me. I have never seen a smile connect so beautifully with that of his eyes. He looked at our son I held in my arms and it was like a piece of heaven was ours. Our little boy was so beautiful with these big green eyes starring at the world in front of us. He looked much like the man in my dreams and he was incredibly alert, the most I had ever seen in any newborn infant. I looked at my son and covered him with a blanket of kisses that I never thought I would do.
As the dream progressed, I called him by his name and I said it with so much heart that I knew it was true. He cupped my face and kissed me in a way that I never have been kissed. He told me that he looked for me all of his life and now he is standing before the truth right before his very own eyes. The look in his face is a face of wonderment and true love that breathes in peace. He was speechless. He just kept repeating, “I love you. I need you. And mark my words, my happiness will only come when I am with you at last.” Before the dream ended, we danced with our infant son in our hands and he sang to me. He had the most beautiful set of pipes I have ever heard. It was the most breathtaking golden lion voice I had ever heard.
When I woke up in the middle of night, I felt like the dream was so real. I was awakened to the smell of cinnamon. That dream along with his face, voice, and that name that will remain nameless out of privacy. I will call him The Dream Man. A month later, in March, I was writing my Snow White rendition in my bedroom and I was home alone. I turned on the television. It was on the FOX channel and there he was, before, The Dream Man was on television singing with this voice very reminiscent to the one in the dream. His looks did not align with that of the dream but he definitely had a resemblance but that most eerie fact was his name and last name. It was the same name in the dream. I freaked out and then suddenly a rush of dreams kept bombarding me. I quickly started predicting thing in his life. He was a real person with a deep pensive infinitive mind and soul connection. This man is a powerful human being who is not living to his ultimate potential. Because of him, my soul has been reintroduced into my life. I will always thank him for bringing me my magnus opus and I hope with this project, we can meet. This is my calling card to where ever you are, I hope this can finally bring us together, not to be romantic or anything, but to thank him in person. Chameleon, in all of its genderless beauty, is an ode to all the twin souls around the universe whose mission is to ascend to the most exalting planar paradise and evoke us with all the love that can seep through even death because as chameleons, with every life, we shed our fleshes and transport to another body but the soul remains the same and that is the true essence of Chameleon.
Chameleon 