When I was younger, musicals gave me panic attacks. It wasn’t natural for a group of perfect strangers to spontaneously break into synchronized song and dance. I’m sure I wasn’t alone.
Today, I understand the root of that fear. A fear of collectivization, of uniformity. The loss of identity, diversity, individuality, liberty, and culture. Psychically speaking, a fear of telepathy. Radio waves that transmit instruction directly into our brains. Typewriters that indent creative coding directly onto the cerebral cortex. Artificial arachnids that crawl into our mouths as we slumber. This train with grey tubes that houses people’s thoughts / Their very remains and belongings, as Don Van Vliet puts it, Bat chain puller / Puller puller.
No matter what Johnny Hart says, the “caveman” is more sensitive than we give him credit. As G.K. Chesterton puts it, “When the psycho-analyst writes to a patient, ‘The submerged instincts of the caveman are doubtless prompting you to gratify a violent impulse,’ he does not refer to the impulse to paint in water-colours…yet we do know for a fact that the caveman did these mild and innocent things; and we have not the most minute speck of evidence that he did any of the violent and ferocious things.”
In “Space Sickness,” we see more of that sensitivity in action. He ain’t painting horses, but the caveman is dancing with the alien while demonstrating—in awe and humility—the power of the Sun, and celebrating the life and vegetation that his star promotes. Naturally, this leads the invading alien to have a eureka moment. She smart-phones back to base, where she surgically tortures the caveman before a shadowy council. In true paranoid science fiction fashion and abduction fantasy, this alien is not his buddy.
Their dance is not synchronized. Their motives clearly differ. So now one fear—the fear of collectivization—has been traded for another—the fear of colonization; getting squeezed into one of those grey Vliet tubes, head like a hole, black hole sun, burnt by the star we worship, tetrodotoxin coursing through our veins. The implant accelerates our movement toward the star we worship. Under hypnosis, burnt to a crisp; the sun is theirs.
Upcoming Tour Dates with Romantic Thriller
07.08.17 - Chapel Hill NC - The Cave
07.09.17 - Athens GA - The World Famous
07.10.17 - Atlanta GA - The Casa Nova
07.11.17 - Savanna GA - Sulfur Studios
07.12-13.17 - Charleston SC - TBA
07.14.17 - Richmond VA - TBA
07.16.17 - Baltimore MD - Normal’s Books and Records (Matinee)
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