Rover

Where am I?
In the Village.
What do you want?
Information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want...information.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Who are you?
I am the new Number 2.
Who is number 1?
You are number 6.
I am not a number, I am free man!



I'm eagerly anticipating tonight's premier of AMC's remake of The Prisoner. Why? I don't quite know. Because I'm an nerd, I suppose.

All summer long I've been mentally drafting an essay on the original series, on it's historical impact and modern relevancy. The show aired in 1967; Patrick McGoohan had ended two runs of Danger Man as British Intelligence officer John Drake, and the Prisoner was supposedly meant to pick up where Danger Man left off--the opening sequence portrays McGoohan tendering his resignation from a highly classified intelligence-gathering agency--so we assume; nobody really says. Granted I have a few more episodes to watch, but as of yet, nothing has been revealed about anything. McGoohan's character, despite professing at the beginning of each episode, "I am not a number, I am a free man!" remains unnamed, and is only known by Number 6. His question, "Who is number one?" is never answered--much of No. 6's time in the Village is spent trying to figure out which side is which (Russians? the West? One incarnation of Number 2 quotes Goethe, the German text referencing an even colder war), or if there were even two sides to begin with.

Historically speaking, a lot of things were about to happen when the show first aired. Prague, in particular, was in the March of its Spring. People were disappearing less, freedom was beginning to look somewhat possible. But a few months went by, the Soviet Union got jittery and the tanks rolled in again.
The U.S., meanwhile, had a conflict in Vietnam that was stretching beyond anyone's expectations. Like Number 6, the U.S. was fighting for something, for sure, but no one could quite say, or remember, what that was.
So the themes of the series work for 1967, albeit a little before their postmodern time.

I also meant to talk about The Prisoner's influence on contemporary serial mysteries, including Lost, which borrows large amounts of the Prisoner's mythology as its own (I'm half surprised that a character is not named after McGoohan).

In movies I just about can't handle it when a character is crying and nobody touches them.

"When Threshing Time Ends"

There is a time. Things end.
All the fields are clean.
Belts are put away.
And the horses go home.

What is left endures
In the minds of boys
Who wanted this joy
Never to end.

The splashing of hands,
Jokes and oats:
It was a music
Touching and fervent.

The Bible was right.
Presences come and go.
Wash in cold water.
The fire has moved.

Gob was growing up.

For the past week, waking up has been an existential crisis. My body, sore and foreign, bubbles up from a sleep thick as mud. I become self-aware, and mourn to the heavens, why?

Lately there are so many concepts to explore and thoughts to flesh out: communism's life as a bad word verses democracy's bloody revolutions; knowledge as power, and fax machines breaking through; will I always have a million new cross-medium projects blossoming, or will I settle down into my niche--and how can I involve the people close to me so that I don't alienate myself with my impulsive ventures? I'm thinking about the ease of introversion and the social necessity of extroversion, and Jeremy Bentham--whom the slower fans of Lost confuse with me--and his Panopticon, a prison designed like an omniscient narrator (its name means all-seeing) that worked on paper but not on Facebook. I'm thinking about Time, traveling through it and wasting all of it. I'm thinking about things I should be doing, and why, when I say I want to learn or do something, I stall, like a transmission on the tracks, and it never gets done.

I'm akimbo in limbo. Maybe I have been for a while.

She means we're bouncing into Graceland.


I should get going.

The local PBS station plays this weekly, and I'm oddly grateful:

We rub shoulders. The man says, "I could probably use your expertise"--I assume she's a masseuse. They discuss pain killers. At a coffee shop.

Later a man looks like a woman.
We could all use some Vicodin. And a latte.

360 Main Street, the Tosspints, and another unabashed plug.

I'm now a writer for 360 Main Street, a Tri-cities news and culture magazine. My first contribution, a feature of local Celtic punk band the Tosspints, was published just moments ago, as was a GIANT photo of my face (for those secret admirers out there)*.

So check it. Then add it to your favorites or to your RSS feed, Google reader, whatever you do, as there's a chance I might write pretty regularly for the site.




*Ironically--I didn't make the connection until just now--my author photo was taken at an Irish pub at a St. Patty's day party. WOAH.

My homeroom teacher in 7th grade liked to introduce herself by saying, "I'm Ms. Madill, as in Mad and Ill!" Quickly adding, "But I am neither of those...!" Later in the year, she brought in clippings from the newspaper about the upcoming Star Wars prequel. I half doubted she had seen the originals, and her current event seemed like a vain attempt to appeal to a younger generation. She taught orchestra, and in my first semester I had her for choir, too, which she taught with a woman who had more hair on her upper lip than all the boys in 7th and 8th grade combined as long as you exclude the Caddy family.
From what I remember, she disappeared that summer. It wasn't like she had announced her retirement or had moved to a different position within the district. Some said she had actually gone mad, others said she had fallen ill. Really she was just gone, without explanation, a handful of irreverent puns and a new orchestra teacher in her stead. Within days of the new year we forgot about her: we had gym class to dress for and blossoming bodies to notice. It was 8th grade, after all.

I don't know where I stand religiously, this circle or that; what I know is that I choose love, or will try.
And so, while war-hungry and plotless evangelicals don't appeal to me, neither do gossipy and alienating agnostics and atheists.