Cybermax and Dialtone

A memoir of my life with intex: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

“The greatest sorcerer would be he who bewitches himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions. Is that not our case?”

“I conjecture,” responds Borges, “that it is our case. We, the indivisible divinity that operates within us, have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time. But we have consented within its architecture tenuous and eternal interstices of unreason to know that it is false.”
   .Jorge Borges, “Avatars of the Tortoise”

.1

I don’t recall how I first got involved with movies though I sure did love them as a kid. I remember seeing Star Wars when I was six. A two-screen theater on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie Maryland, R2-D2 and C3PO hustling across the rebel ship as laser bolts blat vainly around them, the first laugh in the first ever global summer blockbuster. I was totally absorbed in George Lucas’ story and coddled the toys, but another movie thrilled me more: Flash Gordon.

Though I enjoyed every pulpy scene in Flash and found the stop-the-wedding climax every bit exciting as the Death Star detonation in Star Wars, there’s no question why I liked Flash the more. The magnificent music of Queen. From the moment the theme song’s pulsing electric bass is pushed aside by Freddy Mercury’s angelic vocals annunciating to all the world, FLASH! AH-AHHHHHH!, my stripling brain awakened to music’s unchecked power to summon phantasmagoric inner worlds.

Over the course of my entire life I’ve probably listened to the Flash Gordon soundtrack more than any other single album—though this is something of a low bar as I’ve always been more interested in individual songs than bands or artists. The identities of various musical performers tend to blur together in my mind.

I can rarely recall the name of an artist who composed or recorded a piece of music. For most my life I never paid attention to lyrics of songs, either, because there is something wrong with the way I process speech. When friends would sing along to the verses of popular songs while driving I would bop along enthusiastically but could never remember any words everybody else was crooning. I didn’t think something was wrong with me. I just told myself lyrics didn’t matter. Nor could I sing on key which I presumed was due to lack of practice.

I still enjoy a special connection to motion pictures. My broken brain can rarely sit still and mind its manners—it’s usually dashing around madly and obsessively interrogating things related to reality and Mind—but while watching a movie or TV show, my peripatetic brain can finally rest. As soon as a show begins I instantly block everything else out and become totally immersed in story.

To be honest, the experience of watching movies isn’t so different from intex contact. One simply accepts the frenetic sensory dynamics as tentatively authentic and suspends disbelief while watching dragons torch soldiers or cubicle-bound employees sever their brains in two, drawing whatever conclusions our mind will draw from the sounds and sights of narrative stimuli.