Around the time I began starving, in the early eighties, the

Host: The studio loft is dim, its walls alive with flickering projections — old advertisements, news footage, pop videos, fashion spreads, scrolling headlines. Images pour over the concrete walls like ghosts of a world addicted to light. The hum of a projector fills the silence, joined by the faint electric whine of a dozen screens blinking from laptops and phones scattered across the floor.

In the middle of the room sits a single wooden table. On it, a notebook, a camera, and a photograph — a woman’s face half-lit, half-erased by shadow.

Jack stands near the far wall, his gray eyes reflecting the pulsing light, the images flickering across his sharp features like fragments of thought. Jeeny sits cross-legged on the floor, her dark hair illuminated by the projection — her expression thoughtful, troubled, and luminous.

The words appear projected briefly on the wall between them, in pale white text:

“Around the time I began starving, in the early eighties, the visual image had begun to supplant text as culture’s primary mode of communication, a radical change because images work so differently than words: They’re immediate, they hit you at levels way beneath intellect, they come fast and furious.” — Caroline Knapp

Host: The words hover there, dissolving slowly into light, replaced by a thousand images — models, wars, disasters, smiles, hunger, luxury. The world’s collective dream, flashing endlessly.

Jack: [watching the wall] “She said it right — images hit you below the intellect. They bypass thought and go straight for the gut. We’ve traded reflection for reaction. Every photo, every frame — it’s a jolt, not a dialogue.”

Jeeny: [quietly] “And yet, that’s their power. Words ask for patience; images demand surrender. You can’t hide from them — they enter you before you have a choice.”

Jack: [turning toward her] “That’s exactly what frightens me. Words build meaning; images build impulse. When Knapp said she began starving — that was her rebellion and her surrender. She was living in a culture where appearance became language.”

Jeeny: [nodding] “Where your body became your argument.”

Jack: “Yes. And no one could refute it, because images don’t argue — they declare.”

Host: The projector shifts, casting an image of a glossy 1980s magazine spread — skeletal models, promises of glamour written in gold serif. The sound of the film reel intensifies, a quiet mechanical heartbeat echoing through the room.

Jeeny: [softly] “It’s strange — how she ties hunger to imagery. As if starvation wasn’t just physical, but cultural. We were starving for control, for identity, for meaning — and all we were offered were pictures.”

Jack: [sits on the edge of the table] “Exactly. Images told us who to be before we knew who we were. And words — words were too slow to fight back.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s why she wrote about it. Writing became her rebellion — language as resistance against the tyranny of the image.”

Jack: [half-smiling] “The irony being, we remember her words because they painted images better than the photographs ever could.”

Jeeny: [leans forward, voice low] “That’s the thing about words, Jack. They might be slower, but they last. An image flashes and fades. A word seeps.”

Host: The projection changes again, now showing a collage — social media feeds, news clips, selfies, tragedies, all blurred together. The tempo quickens; the room feels tighter, faster, more suffocating.

Jack: [grimly] “And now it’s everywhere. We live in constant exposure. Our eyes are addicted, our brains rewired. People say the camera captures truth — but what if it’s just replacing it?”

Jeeny: [watching the wall] “The camera doesn’t lie, but it doesn’t tell the truth either. It just shows what we’re already obsessed with — ourselves. That’s what Knapp saw before everyone else. The rise of the image wasn’t just a cultural shift. It was a mirror.”

Jack: “A mirror that devours.”

Jeeny: [turns to him] “Only if you forget to look beyond the reflection.”

Host: The room darkens slightly as the projector pauses. The images freeze mid-motion — a woman smiling too wide, a child holding a phone, a protest frozen in light. The silence feels like holding your breath.

Jack: [quietly] “You know, I sometimes envy her — that clarity. To see the danger in something before the world calls it progress.”

Jeeny: [softly] “Clarity often feels like madness when no one else sees it.”

Jack: “She linked image and hunger — because both are appetites without satisfaction. You can’t fill yourself with pictures any more than you can fill yourself by starving.”

Jeeny: [whispering] “And both leave you hollow.”

Host: The projector hums back to life. This time, instead of chaotic media, it shows simple images — a cup of tea, a window with rain, a page of handwriting, a pair of hands folded in rest.

Jeeny: [gestures toward the wall] “But images can also heal. Look — these aren’t trying to sell you anything. They’re quiet. Honest. Sometimes a picture says what words can’t bear to.”

Jack: [nodding slowly] “Maybe that’s the answer. Not to choose between words and images, but to remind each what the other forgot — words to teach patience, images to teach feeling.”

Jeeny: “Like partners. Like us.”

Jack: [half-grins] “Except you’re the image and I’m the footnote.”

Jeeny: [laughs] “And yet, we make sense together.”

Host: The camera pans gently — across the frozen stills on the wall, across the half-empty coffee cups, across the small photograph on the table. The woman’s face in the photo catches the candlelight now — beautiful not in perfection, but in the fragility of being seen.

Jack: [softly, almost to himself] “Maybe that’s all any of us want — to be understood not just in words, but in images that don’t lie, that don’t demand.”

Jeeny: [gazing at the photo] “To be seen and read. That’s what it means to be known.”

Host: The final light fades from the projector. The room returns to stillness. Only the faint whir of cooling machinery and the rain outside remain — both steady, both eternal.

Host: Caroline Knapp’s words hang in the air, not as lament, but as prophecy.

That the image, for all its power, can wound —
because it reaches us before we can defend ourselves.
That words, though slower, can heal —
because they require us to stay, to think, to feel.

And that between the two —
the immediate and the enduring,
the seen and the spoken —
lies the full spectrum of what it means to be human.

Host: The camera pulls back, showing Jack and Jeeny seated in the dim glow, surrounded by silent screens.

The final projection fades in — a single sentence, written by light across the wall:

“To be seen without being consumed — that is the new art of survival.”

The screen fades to black.