Something I remember very vividly about growing up is that I'd sometimes find evidence of a popular culture I'd never encountered. Take, for example, Judge Dredd.
Until I started reading White Dwarf, I don't think I had any real understanding of who Judge Dredd was. I certainly had never read any comic book in which he appeared and, even if I had, I'm not sure if I'd have understood and appreciated the cultural context out of which the character arose. Consequently, whenever I did brush up against Dredd, I was left feeling both baffled and intrigued – baffled, because what little I had gleaned about him made little sense to me and intrigued, for precisely the same reason. I wanted to know more, if only to make sense of all the fleeting references to him on this side of the Atlantic, but it wasn't easy.
Perhaps it's just a consequence of getting older, but I miss the days when I would feel baffled and intrigued by an artifact of some far-off sub-culture. That almost never happens anymore, thanks to the Internet. Assuming I even find something weird from a foreign land – an increasing rarity in the global village in which we're all now imprisoned – it doesn't take much time to find an explanation online. Long gone are the days when I'd be forced to puzzle out who some comic book character I'd never heard of was. Enlightenment is almost instantaneously within reach.
You'd think I'd be happy about that. My younger self would probably have loved to have had access to the Internet. Back then, I didn't enjoy being in the dark. I wanted to know everything about everything, especially when it came to nerdy matters, like science fiction or fantasy. Now, though, I find myself looking back wistfully at the days of my youth, before the emergence of the pop cultural beige slurry seeping into every nook and cranny of our wired world. I miss the days when not everywhere felt the same and I could luxuriate – and occasionally be frustrated by – the differences wrought by distance.
I know this feeling in spades. I greatly miss the days when a trek to a dedicated game (not toy!) store was an opportunity to be cherished, a rare and special thing. If you didn't live in just the right place you'd have to get someone to take you - maybe hours of travel - to a mecca like Game Towne or Things for Thinkers that was lined with so many RPG and miniature games that it must have rivaled looking upon Smaug's horde.
ReplyDeleteThen to increase that wonder exponentially, the thrill of walking into an exhibitor hall at a major convention. Massive sensory overload of the best kind.
Now, just a couple quick clicks and anything for sale anywhere is on its way to you, no adventure in the getting, no feeling of wonder as you looked upon the visual cacophony that was the dedicated Game Store of the 70s and 80s.
The adventure of learning has been lost in the same fashion. Sad, but glorious, days of now.
To this day in over 50 years I have never enjoyed the pure lightning-strike of joy that I had when my father bought me The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh at the Bloomingdale's toy department after a sustained period of good behavior (then rewarded) while he wrangled in Housewares over some kind of miss on a knife set or icecrusher or . . . whatever it was.
DeleteThe very word "Sinister" is one of the finest in the English language. A creepy house. Darkness. Lantern light. Secrets!
I was a huge The Hound of the Baskervilles fan even at nine years of age, so the purpose of the lantern was evident even before I saw the back cover. Didn't matter. I stole away to a patch of woods and read that thing cover to cover. Man, the poison ivy. Not one but two ticks. Also didn't matter. Absolutely the best feeling I have ever had in my entire life.
I can agree that the adventure of learning may have been lost. But I think the adventure of wonder is alive and well, or sinister and brooding. It is what you make of it. It is what you choose to explore in good company. It is a feeling; a dedication to the feeling.
It is Rising Smoke and the men that want to know why.
The polar opposite of my experience. I grew up (in the UK) reading Judge Dredd in 2000AD. I knew about Batman from TV and Superman from movies but I was barely aware of the comics. I and most of my peers didn't read American comics. Occasionally I found one discarded somewhere and they never seemed to make any sense to me. I was fascinated by the completely bizarre ads (for things like X-ray specs and sea-monkeys) and was intrigued by the frequent use of the strange foreign symbol '#' (as we used "no." in the UK).
ReplyDeleteI ran into White Dwarf not long after I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I think, which would have been 1980 or 81. Left me with a sort of obsession with things British and led to P.G. Woodhouse and Douglas Adams and so forth but for some reason never Dr. Who.
ReplyDeleteWhite Dwarf was definitely exotic to me at the time, as it discussed games other than D&D.
Remember seeing things about Judge Dredd but not understanding. The first comic I purchased with Dredd in it was a reprint and it was the introduction of Judge Death and the other judges. Later purchased the collected works as they came out. Good times.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful post, thanks.
ReplyDeleteYou miss the thrill of the hunt. Thing is any of us can get it back. Simply don’t go to the internet when you have a question. Recently I’ve noticed what I call “the pause.” You will be talking with a friend or coworker and eventually a question emerges. You both realize you don’t know something. And you pause. You are both wondering. And realize the moment is fragile and you are both thinking “Do I pull out the phone or go to the computer to find out or do I continue on? Is it ok to not know this?” I find this refreshing a couple of times I have said “You know we could know in an instant… but do we need to?” Oftentimes we have just moved on. And it feels good. Also as a scholar of Tolkien and history I have found that there is a lot that is not online - and then the hunt is on again!
ReplyDeleteFor me it was Eldritch Wizardry and Call of Cthulhu boxed set, both of which I found in separate (crummy) comic shops I somehow convinced my mother to take me to.
ReplyDeleteLuckily she was both open-minded (for a devout Catholic mother in 1980) and generous, and I scored both.
Man, it was as if I discovered a lost tomb in Egypt! I still remember that feeling of wonder forty-some years later. A whole new world opened-up and I never looked back. Sadly, I’m convinced it’s a feeling impossible to recapture, at 54 years old.
At our age we cannot give up on the Impossible Feeling. I believe it is out there, although it may sneak up on us.
DeleteMy marital obligation forced me to a new exhibit opening at our metro Art Museum last evening. It looks like there was a jazz quartet engaged; the sax hadn't shown up yet.
The drummer was warming up down the hall on a spare (small) kit. My wife had wandered off to babble in a foreign language with other shimmers and high heels and hoop earrings. It was just me down that hall. I think at first the drummer was not aware that an average-looking bastard with three fingers of JW Red (it's okay to laugh) was watching him.
This guy plonked the kit to check the fixtures, and turned loose on it. Anyone can smash Megadeth drums, or at least make enough racket that it stuns you. This was not that. This was an expert pulling textures and polyrhythms from that small traveling kit. It was killer, maybe three minutes. I was agape; never touched my poorman's scotch. Just two dudes standing in a hall with one of them wetting his suit.
That's the feeling.
It is out there.
I gave him an OhHellYeah nod and he grinned back and I said "Until the end of my days I'm going to refer to you as Sinister" and we got back to our respective lives.
The Feeling may be brooding deep inside you, awaiting the proper day to burst alight, but it's there.