Painting with a mic, a fish, M4L and Jitter

Hey there!
I'm pretty new at this and have about a week to get this project into shape and into the space. Help would be massively appreciated!
Hopefully this is the right forum.

I'm aiming to use a webcam to live capture a fish's movements, and using user-created audio amplitude (peakamp~) to control jit.slide (or equivalent) amount in M4L. The idea is to mimic oriental calligraphy by using the fish as a brush that only touches the canvas when triggered by audio.

I've gotten this far, but the problem I'm facing is in getting separate 'characters' or brushstrokes that slowly fade over roughly 20 seconds. I can get one long tail, or audio-triggered strokes, but not multiple separated ones.

I've checked a few forums and it seems like jit.gl.render may be of use, but at the moment it's flying right over my head.
Any other suggestions would be warmly welcomed!

The test footage is just from a handheld iPhone, so the real deal (with an external USB webcam) will be much more stable.

Please, oh superior beings, help me!