Post-Apocalyptic Christmas Presents

Hey there, all...

Slowly but surely, even nearing on a month after the move, my room is slowly taking the shape I like enough to feel comfortable writing in. All things told, I have too much stuff and not enough space for it, but I'm very reluctant to give it away or toss it out because they were gifts or remind me of something nostalgic that I wouldn't have otherwise. Maybe I should take to writing one memory that I have in here, so at least there'll be some place. Maybe I should start saving journal entries, too, just so I'll have them in case something happens.

A lot of the memories I have are vaguely bad in some way, and there's a lot of stuff that I've buried but have some kind of really profound effect on why I think the way I do today. Part of this sudden intesrest in memory is inspired by postvixen's stroll down memory lane and by a CD I got from joshuwain sent to me for Christmas. (Yes, Sylvan, I got it!) It's a folk/fantasy CD by Julie Ecklar, called Divine Intervention. I've never really been a fan of said music, but the lyrics, inspiration and artistic process (All of which you get inside the liner notes) make it all worthwhile, and I can really get into the music.

What has affected me the most so far are the tracks "Apocalypse," and "Survivor's Song," both of which were inspired by a 1983 TV-movie called The Day After. If you've never seen it, The Day After is quite honestly the most brutal, real representation of nuclear war ever committed to film. Admittedly, my catalogue of nuclear bomb movies is woefully short, but I've seen enough to at least make *some* comparison.

I'm morbidly fascinated with the end of the world. Maybe part of it is this subconscious belief that I'll see it in my lifetime in all likelihood. I know that with the big arms race of the 80s, I believed it *could* happen. Baltimore has this air-raid siren that blared every Monday at 1 p.m., and every week I would feel my stomach drop to my feet. The movies said that something *really* bad happens after air raid sirens, and even though it was just a test (Remember the Emergency Broadcast System?) the reality that it *could* happen would always be very very frest for that minute or so they checked the system just to make sure it worked right.

I remember what a complete conspiracy theorist I was, even from a young age. I watched nearly every episode of Sightings on Friday, back when it was on Fox, and I was a fan of The X-Files from the *very* first airing, way back in 1993. The first thing I ever wanted to be growing up was a UFOlogist, I once had this weird abduction experience that was probably nothing more than a dream but was real enough to make me question it, I knew with encyclopedic knowledge all of the major abduction stories (Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton, Whitley Strieber among a few others), I read Communion and Fire in the Sky before I could even understand what a lot of them meant...

The most powerful images and memories of childhood were of nightmares. I had really horrific, terrifying nightmares that would literally paralyze me in my bed every single night. There was a span of a month solid where I would have 'end-of-the-world' dreams, a combination of religious (Jehovah's Witness) and nuclear annihilation that just...sucked. A lot. I think a pretty healthy fear of the dark that I carried up until about...a year ago, maybe was spawned from being terrified whenever everyone went to bed.

Anyway, this CD...it's charismatic in its own way. :) Julie Ecklar's voice isn't as good as say, Sarah Brightman's or anything, but she's pretty earnest about all of her music. The talent's not uber-professional, but the *passion* is there, and that goes farther than all of the soulless, over-produced pop in the world.

Cheers, joshuwain. Thanks a lot for the wonderful gift. :)