One of the first albums I ever remember listening to as a child was Stop Making Sense by The Talking Heads. I rocked up and down the block with that bad boy on cassette with my Walkman (portable cassette player for those of you not in the know). 'Once in a Lifetime' was my favorite song, and it was the first song I remember ever demanding to be played over and over again on what seemed like long car trips into Chicago from the suburbs (Schaumburg area to be precise).
Roughly around the same time, one of the first movies I ever recall watching was George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. At the time, the zombies scared me, but the heroes inspired me, battling against all odds to cut out a lifestyle for themselves and live moderately well in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Granted, it wasn't until I was several years older before I understood the social ramifications and subtext interlaced within the film.
As I grew, so did my world. Long drives no longer consisted of motoring from Schaumburg area to Downtown Chicago; rather, they were cross-country drives exceeding 24 hours. Life on other continents became real, conceivable, and believable. Human suffering took on global implications, and the seeds planted by my media choices as a child sprouted into fully-formed and far-reaching trees, branching off into a milieu of genres on my quest to understand, communicate, and express information and emotion.
Evolution took on a new form, and the planet suddenly shrunk. Yet, with all of my growing and changing and unlocking of new ideas, a certain resonance always hummed in the background, emanating from ideas so deeply embedded in my psyche that they probably wired themselves in my nervous system... permanently.
Dawn of the Dead became the springboard into learning about subtext and social commentary in works of art (be they paintings, comic books, novels, movies, songs, etc). Because of George Romero, the foundation was constructed for the house of ideas and meaningful art that would later come.
The Talking Heads became the springboard into a groovy mental frequency, one that was aware and a little bit offbeat. Because of David Byrne, the goofy, yet socially aware vibrations of my personality and my brain were implanted early on, tuning my focus to a very specific brand of lens.
As I aged, I began to notice weird events around me. As a child, I had this tendency to listen mostly to movie soundtracks. They helped me envision the scenes of films I particularly enjoyed and took my imagination on a roller coaster through all those memories as if they were happening now. Eventually, they would grow and take on visual cues of their own, meshing with other things I had learned to create new movies. In an interview I read some years later, Romero admitted that he listened to movie soundtracks as a child to re-create the cinematic experience in his head.
When I was eight, I met Ken Foree, one of the stars of Dawn of the Dead, for the first time. It was purely coincidental at a comic convention. I had no idea he was there, nor did I know who he was until it was pointed out to me by my father, who also was unaware Mr. Foree would be there. Little did I know that I would be interning for him some years later, dealing with publicity responses and attending horror shows, which also happened haphazardly while surfing through the horror movie interwebs.
Even further down the road was my interview with the man himself, George A. Romero, and furthest of all would be the day I won tickets to see his most recent movie, Survival of the Dead, playing in Downtown Chicago for its local premiere.
Talking Heads would continue to follow me through different veins. I would hear their tunes at weird times and mentally time-travel back to when I was five or six, jamming down the street with my Walkman. Be it a friend's house party in college, another friend's Facebook post, or what have you, The Talking Heads followed me everywhere, popping up at odd moments to momentarily send me on an imaginative, out-of-body experience to a world I often ignored while I was tied up with the hustle and bustle of my daily life. I began to encounter people who loved them to death as much as I had, which is a rarity amongst my generation as most of my peers relish their childhood music - early 90s era tunes.
These moments would come at various different times and different moods I was in, and each time, they would leave me in a better state of mind. No matter how angry, depressed, violent, or saddened I felt, the resonance of Talking Heads would mesh with my body's vibrational frequency and calm me in a way that religious people express praying calms them.
They commune with their God the way I commune with certain media. David Byrne is my Jesus Christ, and George A. Romero is my Moses.
And like God, they follow me wherever I go, popping up whenever they please to remind me of my base self, of the imaginative little boy full of wonders that sometimes hides under the exterior of a young man plagued with adult-worries.
In this regard, I don't need Faith or Religion like others do. For one, I hate institutionalized organization (as I have an R.P. McMurphy complex), but furthermore, I found my own vibe that works well for me, that unleashes the creator-consciousness that can accomplish anything. To Him, the moon is a short drive away, and the stars beyond are no different.
Let me grab my Walkman. We'll go on a car ride.
-Doktor nOnsensical
