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kylekozmikdeluxo · 1 year

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Something Uneasy in Paradise

Preamble...

"There's always a breeze. The sunsets are beautiful. Palm trees are everywhere- Get away to paradise, call 1-800-

I'm wrapped in the beauty of the paradise, I'm outside this hotel, by the water... I hear a familiar kind of music... There's a vibe to it, an almost inexplicable one, I feel... Actually, I think I remember hearing this... Somewhere... It's kind of ominous, actually... Uh- You know, it's almost like this is a commercial. An artificiality that I'm somehow existing in... A commercial void of sorts. None of this is actually happening...

But, I can't put my finger on it. Something about this is very familiar...

The late 1990s...

As a kid, I went to the cinema quite frequently. My father took my sister and I to, almost, virtually- every family movie that was out at the time. We saw plenty of Disney films, and we saw plenty of live-action family movies, back when they used to make those regularly. We saw many animated films, too. Some of my earliest moviegoing memories are for films like THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME in 1996 (possibly my first cinema trip as a wee bairn), and then 1997 - HERCULES, FLUBBER, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, and THE BORROWERS.

I actually saw THE BORROWERS twice in the theaters, believe it or not. If I remember correctly, it was because my sister had gotten sick halfway through the movie, and we had to leave. Then we went back, to see the whole thing. I'm guessing my dad got a refund that night, but he took us again to see it... And I remember I was dreading it...

Why? That sounds so absurd. Wasn't that some harmless family movie with John Goodman in it? Because, when you're a young autistic kid in the '90s, in a movie theater with a big screen and everything's louder than it usually is, and you have all these sensory issues... Things are 10x more intense to you... There was a scene where the little people in the movie (it's based on the story THE BORROWERS ARRIETTY, which Studio Ghibli later adapted into a 2010 animated feature, released in America as THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY) get chased around by a vacuum cleaner. And I remember it was *terrifying* to me. I remember the vacuum cleaner just trucking abruptly up at the screen, engulfing the whole thing- I already didn't like the sounds of vacuum cleaners when I was a kid, and again - dealing with a lot of my sensory issues, you could imagine how much that frightened me in the theater. I remember I closed my eyes when I saw the movie the 2nd time. But then once that scene was over, I remember getting through most of the movie just fine. I don't remember what really happened in it outside of a few scenes here and there...

... but I do remember, when I was in kindergarten in late 1997/early 1998, sometimes they'd have us in the class draw a "picture story" of sorts. At the time, I was still a little shook by that scene in THE BORROWERS, and... Well, this is kind of a weird thing I'd like to bring up. I used to do this thing as a child where I would re-enact or rewrite a scene from a movie that I saw, sometimes it would be a scary scene that kinda stuck with me. I would draw the scene, it was kind of my way of processing what I had seen... and weirdly, in turn, it kinda helped me become the writer that I am today. Not just of these tumblr blogs and various animation writings, but also of the stories that I've been writing for years that I'm trying to turn into things I want to release (comics, animated movies, etc.), and the webcomic that I'm currently working on that's in beta form. It's like I kinda learned through understanding movie scenes and just how they played out, and recalling them from memory and then writing them down on paper or drawing a "picture story" of how it happened... and I remember one of my teachers in my kindergarten class was wondering, "Kyle, why are you drawing pictures of people being chased by a vacuum??" And it was just sorta like, "Oh, it was in THE BORROWERS movie!" I'm going on and on and on and on about this John Goodman movie that I've only seen that one time, all the way through, in the theater. I'll have to look it up, haha.

So yes, to reiterate: I am autistic. As a kid, I had a lot of sensory issues when it came to loud noises, or... even in the movie theater, even though I liked going as a kid (and later came to LOVE it as an older kid, preteen, teenager, adult, what-have-you!)... Early on, when I was like 5, 6, 7 years old, I was a little... Unnerved, in some ways at what I would be seeing? Like it would be a little much for me? But I could never could articulate why, and I never bothered to at the time, I was already afraid of other benign things as a child that... Whenever I told people about them, they'd be like "How come you are afraid of THAT? What's so scary about THAT?" Not mockingly, but a little caught off guard. I just couldn't say why it was scary, whether it was a commercial or it was a logo with a weird jingle or anything like. I wouldn't protest going to the movies circa 1998, I did enjoy going, but there were some things where I was like "Hmmm, I feel kinda weird."

So, it's the late 1990s... All the theaters that are the closest to me are National Amusement theaters. They were a theater chain that was bought by Rave Motion Pictures in the late 2000s, and then they'd be bought by Cinemark. They're pretty much all Cinemarks now in my area, at least the ones that are still standing. I'm pulling this from my file cabinet brain, most of this was/is being written as I'm thinking about it, without doing the research that I normally do. Please bare with me- I barely write like this, but I'm in a flurry right now, I'm quite excited about something so minuscule, we'll get there!

So National Amusements used to operate these multiplexes in my home state called Showcase Cinemas. Most of my childhood moviegoing experiences were at Showcase Cinemas. National Amusements theaters had their own sort-of, like any theater chain would, they had interstitials, bumpers, they had commercials and they had what I recently learned were called "snipes". I never knew what the proper term for them was. So, in 1995, National Amusements created a snipe that really stood out...

It was a sort of sequence where it was like a neon cinema with Art Deco touches, and to kid me... This was very "alien", in a way. There was something very alien about it. It's not that it "scared" me, it was weird in a way, like I was still processing the world around me... and now I'm watching this in a dark room, and it's like... Something very strange about it. I got this with a lot of logos as a child, I got this with a lot of commercials and still title cards and such, it was very unusual feelings... I will elaborate.

One thing that cropped up on the Internet, in the early-to-mid 2000s, in some circles tucked away in parts of the world wide web (showing my age by saying that phrase) was this unusual sort of thing... There were people, admitting on message board forums and such that they were afraid of production company logos, of the motion graphic variety...

Where am I? What is this place? Why is it so... I can't define... It's like it... Never ends...

These particular logo graphics were from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Sometimes they'd be as short as 4 seconds, seen at the end of a TV show after the credits rolled. Sometimes they'd be intros on home video releases. On the off chance, they might also be theatrical movie studio logos, but more often than not - in my experience - it was usually applied to television production company logos and home video division logos. More so television, given that home video came about in the mid-1970s but really became ubiquitous in American homes by the end of the 1980s.

A lot of people are absolutely baffled when they come across a word like "logophobia" or they come across the idea of somebody being afraid of a production company logo when they were a child. A lot of people ask, "Why?" Like, why is there a documentary (THE S FROM HELL) about it that was directed by the guy who did ROOM 237? What is this "phenomenon"? Are you all a bunch of wusses? I see it crop up from time to time, and it eventually clicked for me over the years... The director of that S FROM HELL film, Rodney Ascher, he really scratched an itch that I was sort of looking for as someone who was unnerved by benign things as a child.

Via Chris McGovern's The Glass Blog:

Well, just because I was sort of fascinated by it... I certainly got this really visceral memory of being 3 years old, parked in front of the TV for hours and hours and hours, being sort of confused and baffled by these little pieces that were exposed between the cracks of the TV shows. I certainly didn’t have the language when I was 3, but I think what I was seeing was the machine code underneath the TV! [laughs] And maybe this was the window between GILLIGAN'S ISLAND and BEWITCHED, where for a minute there was a gap, and I could see in that gap this kind of cold robotic machinery behind the TV shows.

So, what is THE S FROM HELL? It was a documentary short that was made in 2010, and I believe it screened at one of the film festivals. Sundance? Telluride? Maybe. Ascher contacted people who saw the 1964 Screen Gems logo as a child. These people said that the logo scared them when they were little, and they described what it is about the logo that frightened them in the 1960s and 1970s... Whether it was the strange modern design of the logo, or it was the strange synthesized jingle by Eric Siday. Logos back then used a lot of futuristic and even avant garde imagery and sounds, as they were more in the world of graphic design than they were the fine arts or traditional art. It's a fascinating film because you're hearing, firsthand, from the people, hearing their voices talking about what scared them so much about these logos. Ascher uses a variety of footage and imagery to convey those abstract fears, it's actually a pretty interesting watch. It's almost like an "I feel seen" sort of thing, and while I didn't grow up in the '60s and '70s and experienced that particular logo. Or, another well-known logo that apparently scared the heck out of kids back in the day, the Viacom from 1976. Much like the "S from Hell", it's nicknamed the "V of Doom". Other logos have been given such monikers, too.

Being someone who is autistic, someone who was unnerved by various benign things, sounds and jingles and commercials and such- It's like, WOW, it's not so far-fetched after all! Even neurotypical children were scared of these things. I've read multiple explanations that really made it make a lot of sense. One person said they were akin to weird jumpscares, they came out of nowhere, were unusual, made an impression for 4 seconds, and then disappeared after that. This was, to this person, exacerbated by the janky editing and broadcasting means of the '60s and '70s... And made even worse by intermittent Emergency Broadcast System tones, the Cold War going on, and the possibility of a real cataclysmic event happening... While you were watching TV one afternoon.

Another interesting way of looking at it was being a kid and not having a concept of what a logo is, or what even a corporation is. That's especially interesting for a logo, a motion graphic without a person or any sign of being in it. Usually it was against like a solid or gradient color background, and it was usually just be text and shapes and objects forming up the design of a logo. Like, the Screen Gems logo. A dot with two wrapping parallelograms around it, forming an "S". And the Viacom logo from 1976 is just two shapes forming a "V", with the words a "A Viacom Presentation", usually the music was synthesized or very bombastic or very loud or very... Again, alien. In a way. Much like how I thought the "snipes" in the movie theaters kind of were. It was like "What is this? What does this all mean?"

In the podcast Podcast: The Ride, the hosts brought up this phenomena as well. One of the hosts was talking about the Walt Disney Home Video logo from 1978, the "Neon Mickey" logo, and he had said...

-you know that scary, when Disney started putting out VHSes, and there's that like laser Mickey, do you know what I'm talking about? It's like a neon outline, that is so frightening, although I'm just one of those people who was scared of every VHS logo that ever existed... Definitely. And anything like that, those- just- frightening company logos. Always. Which were often, would have some just weird sound, like [noise]… And I- I just didn't know, I was three years old I didn't know what they were. Like, why'd, how come when I watch a movie, there's all these things?"

That's a GREAT way of putting it, and what I couldn't even begin to articulate as a child describing benign visual media that bugged me.

But yes, looking at it... There is no "human" element, in a way, in one of those logos. For me, it was like being transported into a surrealist space for about 5-10 seconds. That space didn't make any sense when I was five years old, it's almost like you were in a void. It was the weirdest thing. When you don't know what any of those things are supposed to be, when you don't know- There's no person, no human, it's a little bit strange and surreal.

It's kind of like how people say, when they were kids, that a surreal scene in a movie bugged them. Maybe a Disney film like DUMBO, or the Heffalumps and Woozles scene in WINNIE THE POOH AND THE BLUSTERY DAY. All that kind of nonsense in a weird, random void. That can be terrifying and unnerving for some out there, and I feel that's kind of similar with logos. The weirdest thing, though, is that as a kid? Scenes like those didn't bother me at all! I was mesmerized by "Pink Elephants on Parade", "Heffalumps and Woozles" as well- Maybe because characters were present? I couldn't tell you, but they lit my creative fire more than made me want to fast-forward.

I came across a website when I was 12 years old called "KRS Logos", and this site had quite an impact on me. It was like one of those old fortunecity sites that was put together by like maybe 5 or so boomer to Gen X-aged adults, sort of reminiscing about old logos and bumpers; what kind of animation techniques they used, how long they had been used for, what year they first appeared, it was a site I believe was constructed in 2000 and routinely updated up until 2006. I was visiting the site for the first time in 2005-06, and it was being updated with new logo descriptions and such, even though the site looked like it was from 1998.

Sure enough, I found a category on one of the logo pages that was called "Scare Factor".

There were logo descriptions, method of animation used, if the logo was rare or easy to find (rarity would be caused by what's known as "logo plastering", when companies replace the old logo with a later one on reruns), etc.... So the final one was called "Scare Factor", and it was totally the opinion of the five to ten people who made the site and those that they were in contact with on these logos. It'd be like None, or Low: It's a little unnerved. Median: This can be a little bit scary, or there was High: This is terrifying, the weird animation, the loud synthesized jingle, the weird everything- and there was NIGHTMARE. Viacom 1976 and Screen Gems 1964 made it into "Nightmare" territory on that old site, along with the 1978 WGBH Boston logo and a Simitar logo from the '80s. It was very interesting how there was a whoooole forum dedicated to that sort of thing... But then over time, I feel like random kids took control of everything and turned it into the CLG Wiki and then... Oooh, the harmless Nick Jr. logo from 2007, that's SCARY! This is like a 13-year-old kid who says this, and I highly doubt that happened. When most of the scare factor descriptions on the old site were written by adults describing how they reacted to the logos back in the day, it all got lost in a flurry of kids going "Oh my god, the cute Nick Jr. logo from 2006 is the scariest thing I've ever seen!" I'm trying not to make fun, but I feel a lot of people looked at the logophobia thing and were like "What the hell is wrong with these pansies??" And, for a little while, it made me afraid of how to articulate these unusual past fears as an autistic person, and these cynics used a lot of ableism, too. So that did not help.

I will talk about a logo that scared me as a child, and a commercial as well... Like, actually bugged me.

Those who know me well for my Disney VHS collecting side-hobby will likely be shocked when I say it...

The 1986 Walt Disney Home Video logo...

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I have no idea what exactly it was that bugged me about this logo when I was a young kid. I eventually got over this fear when seeing the logo for the first time in years at roughly age 8, unprompted and out of nowhere may I add (hah!), and then it was like "Okay, that's nothing. I was afraid of that?"

But, it had to have been... The low note of the synthesized jingle, the black background, and the red lettering against said background. Now, its counterpart, the Walt Disney Classics logo used from 1988 to 1994? Which opened the same exact way with that still image of Sorcerer Mickey?

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That didn't bother me AT ALL... That had less ominous music, a bright background, a diamond behind the text, silver to golden lettering, etc. Much better! Way Disney-er sounding than that other logo. I didn't dread that logo as a wee one, but the standard WDHV one? Nope, uh-uh.

But if you step back for a second... These logos are kind of bizarre, at least for Disney... It's a motionless still image of Mickey Mouse. Disney, known for... ANIMATION, Mickey Mouse, an animated character... And yet he's but a beautifully-rendered still image in both of these iconic logos. Maybe *that* contributed to it, too? A motionless character? Certainly unusual, equally unusual was the first-ever Disney home video logo with the multiple neon outlines of Mickey's shape... Talked about by Podcast: The Ride up above. I never saw that one as a child, I had only discovered it once I came across the old KRS Logos site and found VHS tapes with it on there... I wonder if *that* would've frightened me at age 5.

So yes, to a kid, especially an autistic person such as myself, you can get weird feelings out of a simple picture. The weird thing is, I grew into majoring in graphic design and I make that kind of art a part of what I often to do, be it comics or any other kind of design that I often do. Maybe it's all rooted back in these logos and interstitial works and little things inbetween the media that I watched as a child, that it all made that much of an impression.

Now before I go on, here's a 1995-ish commercial that frightened me as a child... I dread this one...

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Yeah, you can see why little autistic me *hated* this thing... Serene paradise imagery, then a wham-fucking-cut to AHHHHHHHHH! The way it was shot, quickly zooming out from a screaming guy's mouth, made it all the more worse... It's a funny idea, and I appreciate the commercial's gag now... But 3-year-old me in 1995? "Nooo, not the Honey Pinch Me commercial!"

So, back to the logos-

The visual component is one thing, the music is another...

I already talked a little bit about how the rather odd music of the 1986 WDHV logo didn't sit well with me as a child, but I can't quite adequately describe what about it was so... Unsettling to me. Maybe if that music accompanying a colorful logo or a logo that wasn't red on a black background with a still picture of what should be an animated cartoon character, maybe I'd have received it a lot differently?

Interestingly, the music *does* show up somewhere other than a WDHV logo on an American-released VHS tape... On 2nd and 3rd sets of pressings of the original 101 DALMATIANS VHS from early 1992, this really weird- what sounds like an extended version of the music or a possible alternate/unused recording of the jingle plays over the film's Buena Vista title card right after the movie ends, and segues into a cut-in-half WDHV logo. No "HOME VIDEO" below, just the red "Walt Disney", and the Laser font text below detailing what's to come in the ensuing previews. I remember feeling less unsettled and more... Why's this music here? Whenever this cropped up when 101 DALMATIANS ended. I had the 3rd pressing where the end of the movie went straight to the logo w/ the weird music over it, 2nd set of pressings had a silent Buena Vista first (that's the way movie ended on its 1985 and 1991 theatrical re-releases, Disney would swap the BV title cards with their then-new Walt Disney Pictures castle logo), then the BV card with the music over it. On close inspection, the BV w/ the music and announcer looks to be a paused still-frame. It weirdly lacks any motion the proper version has, like one is from a film print and the other is a paused image. It's really weird! And that only happens on that one VHS release from 1992, a good 6 years after the logo was first created. You can't hear that alternate version of the jingle anywhere else, unless someone unearths it in the future...

I hope someone does, though! Because jingle music, maybe because of this logo and other intros of yore, is one of my hyperfixation-fascination things... Again, maybe because of how it made a weird impression on me as a child...

Over the years, it was discovered that the music Disney used in their iconic Feature Presentation "handwriting" ID (and also the gold lettering one that appeared prior to that) was a piece of production music, 'Great Ovation' composed by Steve Gray, which appears on a 1984 Bruton Music LP called 'Televisual'. Composed by a British individual, recorded by a band/orchestra, meant for one of many sorta-faceless music LPs of all-purpose music. Fascinating! There's just loads of it... Across multiple labels, the aforementioned Bruton, along with KPM, De Wolfe, Bosworth, Berry Music, Amphonic, etc. etc.

The original 'Great Ovation' conjures up images of a ritzy, extravagant game show, flashing lights everywhere and an announcer that could very well be the late Mark Elliot, who voiced the most common Feature Presentation intro for Disney and numerous other trailers/previews. I could easily picture it being on a show that came on during the mid-1990s, for sure. Something later at night. There's another track from the album that I have in my collection called 'Surprise Package', composed by Zack Laurence, it has that same overall mood. Like, I was somewhat blown away that this 4-second jingle was actually a 2-minute piece, sharing an LP with other similar pieces of music. The opening 4 seconds, however, fit perfectly with this kind of intro: The loud horn fanfare, drumming up excitement for what's to come. Like, did staffers at Disney sit down and listen to a ton of production music LPs and CDs before settling on this piece? Disney had actually used it before in the mid 1980s on a demo tape that laid out a holiday promotion WDHV would launch one year (might've been 1985 or 1986), but my question still stands? I'd imagine that's how the assignment goes- all this thought, into 4 seconds of music.

But hey, I was never alone! Defunctland just did a whole epic on the mysterious origins of the 4-note Disney Channel jingle of the early 2000s that everyone around my age has burned into their brains. This isn't some niche autistic thing anymore, it seems. (Maybe that's my internalized ableism talking.) Who's to say someone who worked on the 1986 WDHV won't share some history of the logo's creation? Motion graphics are, to me, a big deal in not only company identity, but also storytelling as well. To me, every good logo tells a story and makes some kind of impression, or at least conveys successfully what's in store whenever you see it... Disney's various print and motion logos, no different...

Starting in roughly 2016, I searched for music that I never knew the origins of, but suspected *could* be production music, and sometimes I won out. Walt Disney Home Video used a piece called 'Pageantry' on this one unique "Also From Walt Disney Home Video" bumper that appeared on the 1991 VHS of THREE MEN AND A LITTLE DAY, from composer Leslie Pearson. A set of bumpers that appeared on the 1992 releases of SO DEAR TO MY HEART and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST used 'Fanfare to the Modern Man' by Richard Hill. Both of these came from 1978 Bruton Music LPs. Someone at Disney must've gravitated towards them! On their own, they conjure up different images as well: 'Pageantry' creates a medieval scene in my head, what with its bugle horns, while 'Fanfare' - very obviously from a sports-themed collection - in its full form makes me think of a football game broadcast circa the mid 80s or mid 90s.

This search also answered some long-held questions I had with some Pixar work: The cheesy, flutey music that plays in the dentist's office in FINDING NEMO on one small scene, and also plays on the original DVD release's 2nd disc menu, is a piece called 'Rosery', composed by Jan Schneeberg and Boris Schoska. It comes from a 1973 Berry Music/Studio One LP, the entirety of it performed by the Manfred Minnich Orchestra. Now, on that same album is a track called 'Waltzing Flutes'. If you're unfamiliar with that one, it's the Krusty Krab Training Video music. Both media, coincidentally, set underwater! The episode in question aired less than a year before FINDING NEMO was theatrically released! FINDING NEMO uses another cheesy tune in one of the dentist's office scenes and on a DVD menu, 'Time for Romance' by John (Anthony) Helliwell, that first appeared on a Concord LP in 1972, it also used in the previous Pixar feature, MONSTERS, INC. It can be heard in Roz's office. Other bits of production music have been used in Pixar films, but one that came out of nowhere for me... The entirety of LUXO, JR.'s smooth jazz soundtrack is cribbed from Bruton Music's 1982 LP COUNTERPOINT IN RHYTHM, all of its tracks composed by Brian Bennett and Carlton Hall.

By the end of 2016, I had fallen in love with production music, and perhaps its rather blank-slate nature is one you can project so many images onto. When hearing the tracks that I now have in my collection, I could see scenes in films that don't exist, scenes that didn't happen - it's more than just some generic stuff to me. It's music made by people, but it's like that element doesn't belong in it - that the listener is the one making the music theirs in a way. It's almost like a void, in the same way a solid color background is on an old motion graphic logo...

So now along comes my revisiting of National Amusements bumpers and interstitial animated segments...

Now, before the neon "snipe" that I mentioned earlier...

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... there was this thing...

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I already had found, as a roughly 5-6yo kid, the big "policy trailer" snipe to be a bit weird and unnerving in a way, this was like an ominous prelude to that... I'm already in a very dark movie theater, a spacious environment, and this title card is an even darker theater. You can't see the exit doorways, not even an outline to indicate they are there, just the flashing "Exit" signs. The weird fakeness of the image (likely a digital rendering of a typical Showcase Cinemas auditorium circa 1989), the starry image looking almost cosmic - combine that with the neon stuff and futuristic city, like that was - again - very "alien" to me as a kid. And that music... It was kind of ominous, too. The idea of an emergency in a public place like that, having to run to another side of the building in doing so... That doesn't help, either.

Now over time, much like the Walt Disney Home Video logo, I got used to this and the longer snipe that followed, but early on you do get hit with that weird feeling... The autism experience is very unique in all of us, and for me, a trip to the movies at night in the in-your-face 90s was quite a trip early on. By 2000, I loved going, so as I got older, those weird feelings were becoming yesterday's news to me.

But those early, almost *primal* feelings - like a fear of the unknown, continue to fascinate me. Especially as I write and create stories, sometimes trying out the horror genre! I feel like modern horror works such as various indie games of the early 2010s (FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S) and analog horror (LOCAL58, GEMINI HOME ENTERTAINMENT, etc.) tap into that sort of thing, and I found myself endlessly fascinated with those. They successfully transported me back to the mid-1990s, in a dark area that might've confused or bothered me, or a piece of media that did back then... I was uncomfortable watching or playing them... Job well done.

Lo and behold, I recently find out that the music that accompanied the "Exit" snipe for National Amusements... Is a French piece of production music titled 'Paradise Hotel', by Stephane Joly. This originally appeared on two KoKa Media releases in 1987 titled JINGLES, one was a vinyl release and the other a CD issue.

So now, instead of a dark theater with warnings about an emergency, I now hear what was the original intention: A sunset image in the tropics, by a hotel, some time in the late 1980s. You can feel the soul influences in the thing, too, I was initially *excited*. I had some shower thoughts that eventually all made it into this post, but then... Not too long after... The piece still seemed weird and ominous to these ears now...

Could it be the long association with a warning snipe? Or is it just that weird '80s synthiness that sometimes comes off as a little unnerving? Is it just a subconscious thing about growing up autistic in the excessive '90s, the very excess that I - an artist - now look at fondly? Why these feelings, that I'm 30 years old now?

I moved out of my home.

I had lived under one roof for 30 years, and now I have moved into an apartment that's a good 15-25 minutes away from where I used to live. I'm about half of a week into my new life there, and a lot still needs to be done to get myself used to the place, but also the looming fear of paying the rent, affording groceries, gas and STILL having the gumption to continue pursuing my creative endeavors and make many of them into sources of income... All millennial worries, right? I have other worries, too, which I won't get into, but it's created a lonely and horrifying anxiety storm sometimes. One of my greatest fears is giving up all of my passion and love of what I love, and sinking into a safety net of bland boredom. There are some days where I'm just too exhausted to let my autistic brain run the way it usually does, spontaneous and excited and finding creative things in life.

Perhaps this is all normal, but right before I moved in, when I started visiting my new apartment at nighttime, those weird feelings struck me. I'm by myself, it's lonely, I have other worries in life that I have no idea how I'm gonna solve, I fear my soul being crushed, etc.

I started feeling primal fear of the unknown. In the dark, like I was 5 again. I mean, I navigate dark basements just fine, but what's going on here? And that's when I came across the piece of production music, which otherwise would not have affected me this way in my adult life... It's like those old subconscious feelings, being a kid and a bit intimidated by the loud world around you, and not knowing what to even do about that. How to process that information. How do you tell your weirded-out parents about some inexplicable sound or image that bugged you?

And like the paradise that 'Pacific Hotel' paints- I'm literally relating an emotionally maelstrom time in my life to a 45-second piece of music that some French fellow composed in 1987 and likely forgot about the next day, anyways, like the paradise in 'Pacific Hotel', my own place should be a paradise, right? Where I can be independent and be me and flower into the me that I've always restrained or hidden my whole life... But there are possibly so many consequences awaiting once I open this proverbial Pandora's Box. It shouldn't be just that, but it likely is in my case. And then add in all the responsibilities and other issues I currently face, it is TERRIFYING.

... and sometimes I simply need a big break from all of these stresses, so I can recharge my creative batteries and reconnect with my best self... The world's already built against your average neurotypical who is merely trying to keep afloat, financially, it is ten times worse for an autistic person who suffers from anxiety. I'm only about a few days into this new chapter, and I have no idea what's ahead. Either that should be thrilling, or utterly terrifying.

I'm happy to have cracked another hyperfixation mystery, though. I'm happy that I made such progress in life, it's the stuff that I have to do to keep it up, ya know?

Facing fears, quite frightening in itself... Comics and art will resume, of course, once I get some aforementioned stuff sorted out (such as having suitable internet), but I had a *lot* thoughts these past few days, from when I started writing this based on a mystery I cracked (I initially intended it for my hyperfixation tumblr - titled @kylesvariouslistsandstuff) on some random interest of mine, to the ensuing nights in my apartment... Again, all largely spurred by some jingle that's 35 years old now and composed by someone I've never heard of before. But I heard the jingle a ton of times in the late '90s and early '00s, when visiting my local movie theaters... I currently work at one of those theaters...

Funny how the brain works, huh? I hope you're doing well tonight.

(Image credit: digital94086, iStock)

#rambling #personal post #special interest #autism #autistic #anxiety #production music #logos #i am hyperfixating #hyperfixation #neurodivergent #Youtube

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