(180): Triggered by Sci-Fi: The Evocation of a State of Being, Of Memories and Adventures
I was minding my own business, doing random searches on YouTube the other day, when I came upon a channel that started a chain reaction in my psyche. It was all 4 seasons of a British science fiction show from the 1970’s called Blake’s 7. This find transported me back to the late 80’s to the early 90’s, when I was into Doctor Who and British comedy and somehow became interested in Blake’s 7, even though I had never seen it before.
I can’t quite remember what drew me to it, unless it was the fact that it was created by Terry Nation, who also created the Daleks and wrote for Doctor Who. I remember that I came into the possession of a couple of Blake’s 7 paperbacks and I even dug up some Blake’s 7 themed fanzines I had picked up at one of the many science fiction/fantasy conventions I attended back in those days. And one of those cons, I remember, featured Terry Nation as a guest.
It was a specific time in my life, when I made dressing up for conventions an active hobby, I spent a lot of time alone watching obscure British television shows and sometimes studying. It was a time when I was coming out of the need to project the “weird girl” image into being truly weird. I was alternately gregarious and lonely, common and rarefied, fun-loving and depressed by turns. It was during this time that I suffered the rape that changed my life. A time of turning points.
And, for some reason, when I heard the theme music of Blake’s 7 several days ago on YouTube, the air surrounding that time suddenly rushed in to my head and it seemed so familiar, but I had never seen it before beyond stills in magazines. It is all a contradiction. I am enjoying the series though, especially the really obvious cheapness of the sets contrasted with the full immersion of the characters, as if they didn’t notice that their world was made of wobbly props.
That music, though. I can’t help thinking that I’ve heard it before and that it was very familiar. But how could I have? Is this a sort of time bomb gone off in my head? Or perhaps the overall sound of sci-fi shows out of Britain of the 1970’s has a certain quality to it. I had enjoyed the contemporaneous series Space: 1999 back in the late ’70s. Aside: How bizarre to pass by the year foreseen in fiction as a technological pinnacle way beyond where we are! A moon base in 1999? A manned trip to Jupiter in 2001? It just shows that the trajectory we were on seemed like an endless ascension back then, and all it seems like now is sailing on a asymptote to nowhere (sorry for the math metaphor, guys).
Has anyone else experienced this effect from their past, especially if it seems to be a past that isn’t quite right or perhaps distorted in memory? Music ties us together with the pasts, presents and futures of our lives in a way that mere words or even people cannot. There is a reason that movies, plays, and television shows have soundtracks. So do our lives. Even if we’ve never heard that soundtrack before.
