Joan Miró was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramist from Catalan, Spain. He was influenced by Sigmund Freud, among others, during the Surrealism Movement, breaking out of an analytical mindset confined to Realism. I understood the title, “Miró, Miró, On The Wall” to describe the surreal reaching for something more yet unknown to most. The accumulation of memories on Claire’s refrigerator of her son Joshua, embarking on the surreal frontiers of computers, and leaving the material world to slide around through his programs lines up with this idea. However, when the sergeant comes to her apartment to give her the news of her son’s passing, she looks to a Miró print on the wall, asking who’s the deadest, alluding to her questioning of the dark possibilities the future holds, and if we should reach for the unknown, knowing how devastating it can be to those still living.
The bereaved mother’s group is more than a mere intersection; the women meet at each other’s homes, with the common trait of having lost a son in the Vietnam War. Our window into these meetings is Claire, and, through her narrative asides, reveals the true feelings she has during the meetings. Claire is constantly reminded of her deceased son Joshua, simply because of his absence, at various moments alone in her apartment, but leading up to, and during, meetings, she is more concerned with the opinions the others have regarding how she compares to them. When she lets on that she lives on Park Ave, she dreads that this will create a wedge between herself and the rest of the group, but at the eventual meeting she hosts, her thoughts are far removed from the gathering, entering a hopeful place reminiscent of her son Joshua. It becomes evident from another aside that, regarding the nonchalant activity of the other women which she describes as selfish, this group is not helping her. Claire doesn’t, at this moment, want to move on or heal, she wants to be reunited with her son. As the meeting progresses, she describes the visit from the sergeant, and has stirrings of a need to heal, finally realizing this is the perfect environment for it.
Primary Characters: Ciaran, Corrigan, Adelita, Tillie, Jazzlyn, Solomon, Claire, the bereaved mothers, Joshua, Lara, Tightrope Walker, Fernando, Dennis, Gareth, Jose, and Sable
Human Intersections/Collisions: approximately 46
