ANALYSIS OF SPACE

At first glance, it is very difficult to analyze the aspect of the space in “The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot” because there are only a few words that indicate a place in which the story is developing as we can see in these verses:

1

 Harry succinct long gone
 to the lake with his tackle
looking for lily berries,
looking for blue pearls. Water
holds his eyes. A silver weir.
0

Sand incessantly beckoning. Sandpipers
scurry to erase the loss of their faint
print at the foaming margin.

It seems to be that Harry is trying to follow the steps of Sand looking for her over the lake. But in my opinion, is a metaphor that pretends to show that Harry is always a step before Sand.

1

Harry Soot believes he is watching.
Harry thinks he is in Times Square.
He is. She is not.

Harry only believes he is watching, it is because the verse says that he thinks he is in Times Square, because he really is in Times Square.

0

Sand sings Nessun dorma long summer
afternoons in the music room. Heavy red
curtains, gilded chairs, portraits of dead
children. Sand in a window seat
looking out on roses;

1

Harry Soot in a seersucker suit
at the far door, arms
raised in triumph:
his play, his score.

Here there is another metaphor in which we can understand that Sand is developing her creative capacity and Harry is gazing at her while his love to her is growing up at each moment.

These examples of places that appear over the text don´t tell us enough to know where the action of the text taking place in each moment is. It seems to be that the space is changing several times along the hypermedia work or even there is no space and the story and is only a set of metaphors that use different spaces to be understood more clearly.

For this reason it is impossible to differentiate between an internal or external space, though we can say that a particular node (commented above) in which Sand is singing “in the music room”, particularly “in a window seat looking out on roses”, we are talking about internal space and, external space appear in another node where “Harry succinct long gone to the lake” or is in “Times Square”.

But the most important thing that is necessary to emphasize is that these small features that indicate space are not important to the developing of the text because the metaphors can be expressed in a different way and cans say the same things.

I would give more importance to the images of the different nodes that help giving more credibility to the story and illustrate what the text means. For example, the images of digital sand etchings made by Ho (Sisyphus project): they show a place, in which there are patterns in the sand made by a ball; this means that the patterns on the sand are very fragile and ephemeral, like the character of the story. I really thing that the images are those who help to situate the reader in a particular space and to understand better the meaning of the work.