Norman McLaren’s surrealist flight of constantly shifting fancy presents a challenge to the viewing eye and mind. Love on the Wing, created for the G.P.O. Film Unit in 1938, corresponds to the complex orchestration of Jacques Ibert’s strident, sassy musical score. A thick white animated line begins the work, rising from a writing tablet, folding itself into envelope form and flying out through a window. This initiates a complex narrative arc, as the line itself morphs into a never-settled profusion of associative imagery. A stick figure in a top hat posts a letter, and the sight of a bell-skirted stick woman sets in motion a chain reaction of eye/lips/kiss/heart, pursued by the top hatted-male. A stone column, cut with scissors, blooms as a flower, and stick figures transform into winged love letters, flying in parallel, before circling intimately in and around each other. A letter escapes from the confines of a bell-skirted cage, chased by a body-parts shedding horse, until only eyes remain. An axe chops the letter, and the lovers are reunited in a cascade of images: bee/candle/apple/hands. The envelope’s white line folds up on itself in ever decreasing increments, until a final dot disappears.