Just watched this love letter of a video, The Voyagers. It reopened a feeling I haven’t had for a long time while it also introduced me to something new that certainly benefitted by being attached to that reopened feeling, but is, in its own right, a very worthy subject. Now then…

The feeling that came back definitely was lit by the nostalgia and scope of the whole film, but it really hit me at 8:56 – 9:20. This image of a retreating earth from space was a vision I had many times growing up. In fact, in high school I covered, and I mean really COVERED, my ceiling with with glow-in-the-dark stickers to get as close to a night sky as kid with equal parts OCD and ADHD can get. I put up a few constellations and clusters up, but I filled my entire ceiling with probably around 1000 glowing stickers of varying sizes. I had a black light in place of my ceiling light(often consummating my astro-womb with The Cranberries, Ray Bradbury, bean bag, water color paints, and sandlewood incense) that charged the glow stickers to the max! I had also bought, with me meager allowance, two fairly large glow-in-the-dark stickers of the moon and earth. The moon I stuck near my door, the earth I put right above my pillow.

I stared at this image every night for a few years(I changed my room around a lot, but I’d usually replace the earth back above my headboard). I’d open my window in the winter and imagine floating in cold space. I’d squint a little on top my dark blue comforter and drift away. These were some of my best memories of high school; it helped me keep things in perspective. And I loved being alone, and not just because I enjoyed the pain of being lonely, like one might enjoy jumping into a hole in the ice knowing they’ll come out before they die. It felt timeless and I needed it. I still do.

A little about that love affair with loneliness. It was always rooted in possibility. Wonderful things I’d experience that really made me feel lonely also made me dream of the kindred spirit with whom I could someday share those things: at the top branches of a juvenile Red Pine listening to the wind blow…  driving through Clearwater National Forest on Hwy 12 in Idaho… sitting at a cafe along Kalakaua Ave at Waikiki reading…  crying to Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There”(before Free Willy ruined it) in my underwear and white v-neck t-shirt. Yeah… magical.

Anyway, the image I held in my head of the earth from space held this same sad hopefulness. From middle school through… now, I guess, I have been drawn to science fiction and a theme that recurs in most books and movies is adventure paired with isolation. Like many people I know, it’s left quite an imprint on my personality. That’s probably why I’ve always loved driving in the middle of the night and imagining it was post-apocalypse. But this idea of leaving earth?  Just like the cold air from my window, felt clean. I loved the idea of starting new without so many people. It would be sad to leave my beautiful world, but oh the places I’d go! I am an explorer, a scout at heart.

That said, onto the “something new!” The film introduced to me the band The Magnetic Fields. The voice in the closing credits is that of Stephin Merritt, songwriter and singer for the band. They have been around since the late 80’s but this is the first I’ve taken notice of them. I found the closing credits song, “Book of Love,” on a huge three disk volume, 69 Love Songs. I love it. I’m listening as I write…

And nothing matters when we’re dancing 
In tat or tatters you’re entrancing 
Be we in Paris or in Lansing 
nothing matters when we’re dancing

So great! Despite many of the songs are of unrequited love it still sends me out of orbit and into the heart of my old mate, the Milky Way. Ope, off I go!!! Can’t hold on any longer.  Join  me  if   you’re   feeling   a       bit     world  –  weary          .              There’s              space                    for      you,                      too…

Dance with me my old friend 
once before we go 
Let’s pretend this song won’t end 
and we never have to go home 
and we’ll dance among the chandeliers