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what does the gun do?
Wednesday, 17 June 2009 07:18 amI've been devastated to note, lately, that I don't remember as many of my dreams as I used to, and when I do they're not the over-the-top weirdnesses of symbols which used to haunt my nights to my very great enjoyment. I don't know if this is because I'm stressed, and therefore tired enough that I sleep deeply, or if curriculum advice is not productive of the same level of strangeness as is teaching science fiction and fairy tale. Either way, I am impoverished by the lack. Except last night seems to have been a return to form, possibly prompted by re-watching the first half of The Lost Room with jo&stv and the Evil Landlord, in company with a mad new experimental recipe for cidered lamb with dumplings. (Adjudged a howling success, now with added howling).
(Quick digression: man, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed The Lost Room. It's a beautifully elegant concept, pursued intelligently through intelligent scripting with (and I cannot sufficiently stress how orgasmically happy this makes us) intelligent characters. The consensus last night was that the characters, particularly Detective Miller, operate like an experienced, thoughtful role-playing party1: they assess, experiment, connect information, make leaps of intuition. Miller himself plans, anticipates, thinks - you don't doubt for an instant his commitment to getting his daughter back, but the emotion doesn't cloud his analytic ability. Many of his opponents are also quick to understand ("they're upstairs", said with world-weary certainty), and intelligently ruthless in pursuing their ends. The series is tense, surreal but above all logical, and the central concept, which really could have been screwed up by the usual Hollywoodoid hamfistedness, is actually well executed. It all makes you realise quite how low a level of intelligence we're used to in our movies and TV. Alas).
Anyway, I slept really badly last night - woke up every hour on the hour, pretty much, until about 3am. The second waking was bizarre. I drifted to the surface to realise that there was a man sitting next to my bed, behind a giant console or computer or control board of some sort. He was using it to do somethingorother to me, and to my bedroom, which bathed the whole room in a slightly baleful red light. I did a huge double-take as I realised he was there and catapulted myself to the upright position, shaking and gibbering, whereupon of course I realised, slowly and reluctantly, that I was dreaming and there was no-one there at all. Hello hypnogogic hallucinations, had forgotten all about you...
(Quick digression: man, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed The Lost Room. It's a beautifully elegant concept, pursued intelligently through intelligent scripting with (and I cannot sufficiently stress how orgasmically happy this makes us) intelligent characters. The consensus last night was that the characters, particularly Detective Miller, operate like an experienced, thoughtful role-playing party1: they assess, experiment, connect information, make leaps of intuition. Miller himself plans, anticipates, thinks - you don't doubt for an instant his commitment to getting his daughter back, but the emotion doesn't cloud his analytic ability. Many of his opponents are also quick to understand ("they're upstairs", said with world-weary certainty), and intelligently ruthless in pursuing their ends. The series is tense, surreal but above all logical, and the central concept, which really could have been screwed up by the usual Hollywoodoid hamfistedness, is actually well executed. It all makes you realise quite how low a level of intelligence we're used to in our movies and TV. Alas).
Anyway, I slept really badly last night - woke up every hour on the hour, pretty much, until about 3am. The second waking was bizarre. I drifted to the surface to realise that there was a man sitting next to my bed, behind a giant console or computer or control board of some sort. He was using it to do somethingorother to me, and to my bedroom, which bathed the whole room in a slightly baleful red light. I did a huge double-take as I realised he was there and catapulted myself to the upright position, shaking and gibbering, whereupon of course I realised, slowly and reluctantly, that I was dreaming and there was no-one there at all. Hello hypnogogic hallucinations, had forgotten all about you...
1 i.e. not like ours at all. Or at least without the bickering.
