Musings

Wondering why Wally's music made me such a fan? Maybe feeling a little Wall-nutty yourself? I'll actually post a little from me for a moment, but don't get used to it, it's right back to the man after this!

On The Nature of My Fandom Life was a pedestrian process before April of 2012. I went to work, went to class for the continual pursuit of my graduate degree, came home, looked around at life and rarely wondered “so what?” Until a tiny auditory meteorite burned through the atmosphere and shot straight into the areas on my brain which apparently lord over the whole of my spiritual self-identity. Probably the amygdala or something near that area. It started with a song, then a clever little film clip for the song, featuring a strange, painted humanoid creature with a gaping mouth that appeared capable of swallowing an entire heart in one attempt. Sounds like some terrifying monster, right? No, in fact, although initially somewhat off-put by the emerald-eyed beast, I could not help but be rapt by the music it was producing from said facial orifice. I put my confusion aside and just listened…..I was not utterly transformed at first, just….interested. I listened some more-to the creature singing about ruining the world. I believed he could, at that moment. I believed something strange-I was concerned that I was fumbling with a personally profound discovery. It was that song-about eyes being wide open to impending desolation-that I found myself feeling scorched and barren. There’s something difficult about falling in love with something, especially when that something is…well…something you did not create. Something that someone else made. It calls into question every pursuit to which you have committed yourself, every project and relationship and pledge. It makes you wonder if you ought to just toss your work into the fire, because clearly, someone else out there has just made something that you yourself long to have been capable of. It becomes an existentially rocking experience. Maybe you have not had this experience, or maybe you have with something else in your life, or maybe you’ve felt some semblance of it for the music. If you have, my messy heart goes out to you. Since then I have been compelled to the work of a chameleon-finding each branch I can of the art and straining to blend a bit of myself with it until a tiny part of my mind and heart melt into it. I will never disappear into it entirely, that would be a mistake, but fragments of my self have broken off and floated away into that orbit, and I will never get them back. Not sure I want them back. I think the only sustainable way to respond is to embrace the loss of my pieces into the creature’s art, and let him, in some remote way, become a part of my self-identity. I must retain this sense of unease, perhaps it will check me in the moments when the torpor of life engulfs me. I suppose I must get comfortable with the discomfort, in times when life throws me troubles-it will help me remember that not everything in the world is shithouse. Thanks, Wally-creature. You changed a little bit of she who is steely and stubborn.