Damselfly

The image of a damselfly is the main feature of the show's logo, and appears repeatedly in the merch for the show as well as in the show itself. Damselflies are closely related to dragonflies although they are generally smaller and differ slightly in their physiological characteristics. Historically, dragonflies and damselflies have represented both goodness and prosperity (to East Asian and Native American cultures) and evil and injury (to European cultures).

Jeffrey Cranor has said that he cannot recall how or why the damselfly motif started, but working it into each season naturally was a fun challenge.

## Instances

### Season 1

In the first relaxation tape that Hester produced for Oleta in the Institute, she included a visualisation exercise where Oleta was inside the mind of a winged insect being captured by a child. Through the insect's compound eyes, she saw the forest, and then the child, iterated many times. The girl trapped the damselfly and studied it while it struggled. On a branch above them, a bird watched and waited. The girl tore the insect's wings off, and the damselfly saw part of its own body for the first time. The girl did not regret her actions, and blew the wings into the wind like a kiss. She put the damselfly down on a rock, and it stayed immobile while she skipped away and a bird landed beside it. The insect started to crawl away, and the bird swiftly swallowed it.

Although less explicit, a device in Oleta's body that regulated her memory was likened to an insect. It "lived" in a "cave" between her left rib and left hip, and glittered like starlight. It had many extremely long legs that usually curled beneath it, and fluttering wings. It collected "photos and charms and cigarette butts, floral scents and faces and feelings."

### Season 2

Claudia Atieno's painting "Child and Damselfly" was featured in the opening exhibit of the Karikari Contemporary Gallery in 1969. It had previously been owned by Aimee Layeni. The painting (pictured opposite) featured a young Claudia playing with a damselfly she had caught. In Roimata Mangakāhia's audio guide to the exhibit, she suggested that the lake in the background was Lake Victoria in eastern Africa, near where Atieno was born, and that the child was Atieno herself. Some critics had disputed this since the name of the piece was "*Child* and Damselfly" and not "*The Artist* as a Child and Damselfly" but Roimata believed the resemblance to Claudia was too strong to ignore.

The child was holding the damselfly firmly, with great interest. She was critical - she loved it for what it was, but also wanted to know more about it. Roimata asked the listener if they had ever been held and seen like this. She pointed out two shadows along the right hand side of the painting, which she said were two humans, presumably the child's parents, out of view.

Roimata recounted in 1977 that Claudia had once told her she used to capture moths and flies around her Programming Centre. She would look at them closely, studying their complex eyes and hairy twitching legs. She wouldn’t kill the damselflies, but she would tear their wings from them and set them back down, watching them crawl away. She would hold the wings like a microscopic stained glass window up to the sun and then blow them out to the wind, as if they were seed pods that could land upon a spot of fertile earth and grow again. Roimata asked her why children did such mean things, but Claudia said she didn't think it was mean at all, and in fact she still did it occasionally.

One of Roimata's early artworks, placed tentatively between 1953 and 1958, was a charcoal drawing of a damselfly. Hester commented that while they were prevelant in her sketches, she had never seen Roimata put one in a fully realised painting. She also speculated that the abundance of damselflies in Roimata's work and the abundance of damselflies in Claudia's work was strongly connected.

### Season 3

On March 24, 1954, Michael Witten got drunk in his office and left dictaphone notes to his secretary Amy. At some point during the night, he noticed a winged bug flying around the office. He described it as carved jade sitting atop a bronze staff, only with wings. The wings and its body were long and thin. He said it was beautiful, but it kept dive-bombing his face.

When Michael was turned on and used as a scapegoat by Vishwathi Ramadoss, he described her accusations as emotionless and merciless, "like a child with a bug." Rather than vindictive, she seemed to just be curious about how and how much she could hurt him. He described her plucking off his wings and legs, setting him on fire with a magnifying glass just to see what happened, and then leaving him to die in the dirt when she got bored.

### Season 4

Freya suggested that members of the Cradle nurture their faith daily, finding a quiet spot to "commune" with nature - damselflies and starlings - and weed out doubt.

In Freya's manifesto, *The Hand*, there was a parable about a girl, a bird, and a damselfly. In it, there was a young girl aged 8 or 9 who wandered the woods with a long branch she had found broken from a tree after a thunderstorm. In the mud, she carved shapes such as faces, animals, and her own name. She pretended she was a goddess or a witch, with the power of creation, manipulation, and destruction. She was also a conductor with a baton, directing a song without words, about herself.

She saw insects and tiny creatures with tiny wings like stained glass windows, and felt that she owned them. She grabbed at them and eventually caught a damselfly - named by herself for its elegance diminuity, and femininity - and pinned it against a rock. She studied it closely as it tried to escape and plucked off its wings. When she let it go, she watched it writhe, and then became bored and went back to her stick and her imagination.

A raven perched on a branch above the rock and eyed the damselfly for a moment before hopping gently from the tree and floating down to the rock, where it ate the damselfly.

Freya said that since nature was to be respected, so 'we' were not the callous girl, and 'we' were not scavengers, and therefore not the raven, Freya concluded that the parable demonstrated the value of sacrifice - even unwilling, painful sacrifice - for the betterment of the larger ecosystem; the raven's stomach, and the girl's mind. 'We' were the damselfly. She used this story to try and convince the Hedmark Cradle to let themselves be killed by the IID in 1999.

### Season 5

In March 1997, Indra mentioned that 'Emma and the Damselfly' by Miriam (or Madeline) Something was required reading for Year 5s at her Childhood Centre. It was about a little girl who was fascinated by bugs, and her teachers encouraged this interest. She began torturing the spiders and butterflies she found out of her interest, worrying her carers. One day, she was alone in the woods and found a damselfly whch she began to examine. This part of the book was accompanied by an illustration of a damselfly, with wings like stained glass, a green body, and "disco ball" eyes. Indra drew the damselfly a lot, and eventually got a tattoo of it. In the story, Emma tore the wings off the damselfly and left it to get eaten by a bird, and Indra found this cruel and horrible, prompting her to cry. She believed as an adult that the book was meant to carry the message that killing things is wrong, but it is also nature to explore and learn. Emma's story becomes an arc where a biology instructor sees this whole thing and then takes Emma under her arm and shows her how to turn her heartless cruelty into heartless scientific research. Ultimately it had the message that violence was bad, except when necessary. Indra finishes by saying she hated the book.

In January of 2002, Indra asked Nan to bring her a red scarf embroided with a damselfly pattern while she was staying in Bath to help fix a stage production being put on there.

### Season 6

On 29 October, 1973, while staying at the home of Gráinne Lynch near Ballinroche, former Ireland, Clíodhna Byrne saw damselflies clustered around a patch of bright yellow tansies in the garden and mistook them for faeries. Upon closer inspection, she realised they were damselflies, but remarked that it was odd to find them when there was no water nearby, and described the light hitting them as a spring sunrise, despite it being sunset in autumn. On the night of 30 October, Clíodhna dreamt of a young boy with dark curly hair and no irises or pupils. only blank grey eyes. He had damselflies fluttering around his head, and he was holding tansies in his hands.

### Season 7

Rose Torres once carved a wooden damselfly pendant, which she inlaid with pyrite (fool's gold) for the eyes. Years later, Elena Jiménez gifted the pendant to Rose's daughter, Anita, at the start of a scavenger hunt she had made for her.

### Season 8

In Tony Tollinger's introductory cassette, he used an example of a possibly fictitious entomologist named Gerald who was hired by an agricultural equipment production company. He could distinguish a dragonfly from a damselfly at 100 paces, but he didn't know the first thing about agricultural equipment. Despite having a different expertise, Gerald was able to use his organisational skills and insights to restructure the company into being more efficient.

### You Feel It Just Below the Ribs

Miriam Gregory incorporated the folktale of the child and the damselfly into her Watercolor Quiet regimen for children. In this version, there is a girl alone in the woods, and she envisions herself as the ruler of the whole world. She pretends that twigs are magic wands and puddles are lakes, and she is hundreds of feet tall. She captures a damselfly and examines it, noticing its stained-glass-like wings, amethyst-like eyes, and iridescent purple-green body. She tears the wings off the insect and places it down on a rock. She is about to kill it, when she is distracted by a rabbit, leaving a raven to devour the bug. Miriam claimed the story was about scientific discovery, independent study, and empathy, but had no morality ascribed to it; it was neither good or bad that the damselfly died, because damselflies died all the time, and it was up to the child to make the ethical decision for themself.

Edgar Hartley's version of the story was different from Miriam's - according to the way his mother told it, the girl studied the damselfly carefully, but didn't harm it, and let it go. After saying goodbye, the damselfly returned, and the two became friends. Edgar was upset that his teacher insisted this version of the story was wrong, and that his mother lied. This was the first indication Miriam saw that the memory regimen was not working as expected on Edgar.

## Gallery

Damselfly pin by Emily TatGlow-in-the-dark shirt design by Emily Tat
## References

1. ↑ Dragonfly - Wikipedia
2. ↑ Within the Wires (Jeffrey Cranor) on Twitter: "the story of the damselfly is a recurring theme throughout WtW. idk how this started, but it's a fun exercise to fit it metaphorically/thematically into each season. -jc"
3. ↑ Season 1, Cassette #1: Stress, Shoulders
4. ↑ Season 1, Cassette #4: Sadness, Lungs
5. ↑ Season 2, Cassette #0: Karikari Contemporary (1969)
6. ↑ Season 2, Cassette #5: Van Gogh Museum (1977)
7. ↑ Season 2, Cassette #10: Karikari Contemporary Gallery (1986)
8. ↑ Season 3, Reel #6: March 24, 1954
9. ↑ Season 3, Reel #7: March 29, 1954
10. ↑ Season 4: Cassette #9: Autumn 1998
11. ↑ Season 4, Cassette #10: Autumn 1999
12. ↑ Season 5, Episode #10: March 1997
13. ↑ Season 5: Episode #4: January 2002
14. ↑ Season 6, Episode #8: 29 October 1973
15. ↑ Season 6, Episode #10: Samhain
16. ↑ Season 7, Episode #1: Amarillo
17. ↑ Season 8, Cassette #1: Take Responsibility!
18. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.167-68