A Tale of Two Boxes: Lulu’s Labyrinth & My Wonderland’s Whimsy

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Michael Garcia Mujica

"Currer Bell is neither man nor woman, but an abstract thing, an artist."

• Michael Garcia Mujica, Lead Educator in Arts and Film History.

Echoing the sentiment about Charlotte Brontë's pseudonymous voice, Michael lends his expertise not only as a writer and visual artist but also as a Lead Educator in arts and film history. Based in Coral Gables, Florida, he is the principal of Vintage Brooks, Inc., where he passionately revitalizes the legacy of silent film star Louise Brooks. His acclaimed blog, Naked on My Goat, serves as a living tribute to Brooks's enduring influence in film, her profound writing, and her broad appreciation for the arts.

Just as Brontë made an indelible mark in literature despite the societal constraints of her time, Michael accentuates Brooks's trailblazing spirit within the film industry. In his role, he ensures that Brooks's iconic voice continues to resonate within the cultural lexicon of the 21st century, celebrating the intricate victories of women in the arts, both past and present.

Explore more about the abstract persona of Charlotte Brontë in Michael's piece, "The Abstract Persona: Understanding Charlotte Brontë's Pseudonymous Journey as Currer Bell."

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

• Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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Latest posts by Michael Garcia Mujica (see all)

• Ctrl+Alt+LULU: A Tribute to Louise Brooks - November 20, 2024
• Louise Brooks: A Muse of Shadows and Light - November 14, 2024
• Lost Souls in the City of Dreams: Angelo Badalamenti’s Love Theme and the Fragile Illusions of Mulholland Drive - September 1, 2024

A Writer’s Whimsical Wandering to the Written Word

A writer’s winding way to the blank page is seldom a simple sojourn. For a storyteller such as me, it’s akin to an accidental adventure, alighting after Alice, headlong into the heart of Wonderland’s whimsy. In the silhouette of shadows and shimmers, let me share a secret: it wasn’t the white rabbit, watch in tow, that whispered words of wonder into my waking world. It was a silent film siren with sultry eyes, a symbol of lithe lissomeness, and a signature bob that beckoned.

Louise Brooks, the luminary of Lulu in Hollywood, lifted the lid of the literary lantern that lit my path—a path paved by the penned pieces of L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll, leading to the labyrinthine lore of David Lynch’s cinematic landscapes.

To crack open Lulu in Hollywood was to catapult into the technicolor terrain of Oz. Brooks was my bright-eyed beacon, guiding my gaze down the golden gravel of the yellow brick boulevard. With every brisk bend, she breathed into me the belief that bravery, brains, and a beating heart beckoned bountiful bouts of brilliant storytelling.

From Oz, on wings of whimsy, I was whisked to Wonderland. My muse, Brooks, bounded before me, beckoning me to believe in the bewildering and bizarre. Skimming the sumptuous tapestries of Rochester, she soared, not in mere solitude, but in a transcendental trance that tickled the cosmos, echoing Alice’s own escapades among eccentric entities.

In a cinematic cosmos where Lynch’s Mulholland Drive left audiences awash in a twilight tangle of enigmas, Brooks had already bedazzled with her bewitching box—Pandora’s. Yet another box—azure and arcane—awaited my own unveiling. Two boxes: one, an emblem of ethereal enigma immortalized by Brooks; the other, a vessel veiled in velvet mysteries, reminiscent of Lynch’s labyrinthine visions. Within this cerulean chest, dreams drifted and danced—draped in the drama of Brooks, shadowed by Lynch’s suspense, buoyed by Baum’s brilliance, and entwined in the enigmatic escapades of Carroll.

Within the variegated vertices of Louise’s labyrinthine life—a tesseract of time, Each edge was an elegy, every corner a clandestine chime. She wasn’t merely the monochrome muse of motion pictures past, But a luminous lexicon of layers, with luster so vast.

Bathing in Brooks’s brilliance was akin to basking beneath a butterfly’s wing, Each fleeting frame, a mosaic—each silent syllable, a song to sing. From Pandora’s perplexing parcel to Lynch’s labyrinthine lure, Her life, a tesseract of tales, tempestuous and pure.

In the very veins of this vivid vision, flowing fervent and free, Danced dreams drenched in diaphanous duality. For Louise, life was a leviathan, not merely long, but large, Like a tesseract’s tapestry, an artistic barrage.

Lynch, a lodestar of the labyrinthine, lent lessons in embracing the erratic and enigmatic. His narrative nuances, like the nuanced notes of Brooks’s own ballet, brought to the fore the beauty of breaking barriers.

My manuscript’s map might seem muddled, marked by many meandering moments. Perhaps, to put it plainly, a plunge, a plummet, a poetic positioning upon the page. But isn’t life, in its lovely, loony layout, a labyrinth leading us through a litany of lighthearted lapses?

In ink’s embrace, as I muse on my meanderings, my heart hums with heartfelt thanks. To Louise Brooks, the luminary that launched me into a literary labyrinth; to Lynch, the maestro of mysteries; to Baum, who bestowed bravery; and Carroll, the curator of curiouser and curiouser chapters. And, just as Charlotte, under the guise of Currer Bell, penned the path of Jane who sought selfhood, so too did Brooks bolster my belief, birthing my voice in a vast vista of verity and vision.

For in fiction and film, in fantasy and fact, aren’t we all authors, aiming to articulate our own anthology?