Progressive Thoughts - Day 12

Today’s song is another by Rush. This is a recent one called Headlong Flight, which basically talks about how being happy about your life despite the ups and downs that you have had to endure.

As you can expect, in 54 years of living on this weird planet, there have been quite a few ups and downs, a lot of which I’ve bored readers with in the (almost) nine years I’ve been writing crap for the world to read.

In the grand scheme of things, however, my contribution to the history of this planet (or more accurately, the history of humanity on this planet) is in fact so tiny that it is negligible. In two hundred years’ time, my contribution to history will probably only be a footnote in the hobby of a descendant researching their family history. That assumes that I am lucky enough to have descendants at that time. I have two boys at the moment and I would like to hope that they will both produce clones who will also produce clones (etc. etc. etc.).

What will they discover?

With any luck, they will find an ancient blog out there on whatever the internet evolves into and hopefully they will regard my wittering as something they can appreciate, despite all of its flaws.

As I get older, I find myself looking backwards to the past more and more often. There are constant reminders, such as music, television programmes and people dying (as morbid as that sounds) that remind me of times gone by and I am beginning to feel an urge to scribble it all down in a medium other than an amateur blog.

That’s why, a couple of years ago, I started scribbling down a kind of autobiography. As usual, procrastination has been victorious and beaten me into submission so I have left it untouched for at least a year. My main reason for starting it was to hand it down to my lads so that they could remember me when the Grim Reaper knocks at my door.

I didn’t do this for selfish reasons. On the contrary, I want them to see what my life was like before they were born first hand rather than looking at history books primarily because I regret not finding out more about my own family history.

My own family may seem unremarkable in the grand scheme of things but when you dig down there are some nuggets of interest.

My grandmother’s brother, for example, was killed in World War I and my grandad was a prisoner of war in World War II.

These stories are gold and I hate the fact that, as a child, I didn’t interrogate my grandad about his experiences in those tragic times.  I can’t change that now because, sadly, there is nobody around to inform me.

My own life is far less exciting, as readers will agree. Nevertheless, there are some nuggets even in my life that may be of interest to future generations. For that reason, I aim to complete my stupid little autobiography and possibly even to delve into my own family history and write something about that.

Who knows what I may uncover?

I may even find an old book written by an ancient ancestor of mine full of rants about how unfair life was back then.

Now wouldn’t that be interesting.

Progressive Thoughts - Day 4

I love the title of today’s song but I must confess to not really understanding it. The song is by one of my most recent and favourite discoveries, a progressive rock band from Poland called Riverside, who have totally won me over in the past two years.

The song is called Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened by a Hat?).

To some people this sums up how strange progressive rock can be with weird song titles and bizarre concepts as subjects. Yet, despite the odd title, this is a beautiful song and typical of the band.

The meaning of the song is, thankfully, not weird at all. Basically, it is about somebody looking back at his younger self and picturing the innocent wonder as the boy contemplates his future life with no fear – only excitement.

I can relate to that.

I cannot remember the thoughts going through my mind as an innocent boy. Some of my friends may ask “Were you ever innocent, Dave?”, to which my answer would be “Of course!”

But as a young child, I cannot confess to ever being unafraid of the future. To be honest, I was captivated by it but also deeply scared because it was all about the unknown. My fascination with science fiction steered my imagination into a vision of the future that was as terrifying as it was amazing.

Back in 1970, most kids were looking at the year 2000 with awe. I used to love reading books and watching TV programmes about what life would be like in that amazing future. To be honest, some of it has come to pass, but equally, one or two ideas from that time are laughable.

For example, we all thought that there would be a Moonbase, like in the TV series Space 1999 and UFO, and that we would be travelling to the outer reaches of our solar system. Also, the vision of orbiting space stations crammed full of people seemed to be a distinct possibility.

Closer to home, we pictured ourselves sitting in futuristic houses, with robots as servants , We would travel around in flying cars and be able to travel to the other side of the world in aircraft that left Earth’s orbit and could, say, fly from London to Sydney in just two or three hours. Furthermore, seers predicted that we would barely have to lift a finger in our own homes, from asking the cooker to prepare dinner and switching things on and off with voice command.

Now these later items do seem possible. Certain people got it totally right, particularly with the prediction that we would be carrying or own computers with us (in the shape of a smartphone) to being able to summon our own entertainment by watching television on-demand from a vast library of movies, TV series and box sets.

I am fascinated by the future and I would love one of two things to happen. Either I somehow become immortal and can watch the development of future technology over the next few hundred years, or somebody invents a time machine that can whisk me away to the future where I can see for myself what happens.

That would be a dream if it were possible.

Of course, depending on your religion, there might be some hope that when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, I may be born again and enjoy the future that way. Sadly I won’t be able to remember this life – unless technology permits it, of course.

Who knows?

I remain optimistic.

A Journey Through Time And Space

I was watching a repeat of Dr Who the other day and I suddenly had a thought:

What I would do if the famous Timelord materialized in my house, popped out of his TARDIS and said:

“Dave, I will take on ten trips anywhere you want and anywhen. Where do you want to go?”

For those readers who do not know, travellers in the TARDIS have the ability to communicate with those whom they visit because it has a translation circuit that allows them to understand aliens etc.

I would need that.

Here’s where I would ask the Doctor to take me:

The Mesazoic Era

The first place I would visit is Earth in the period between 230 and 65 million years ago, known as the Mesazoic Era. As a kid I was fascinated by dinosaurs and I would want to see those legendary and enormous “terrible lizards” that roamed the planet. Top of the list would be Tyrannosaurus Rex, followed by the other popular creatures – any massive creature in fact. I would also push my luck and ask the Doctor to show me what really wiped them all out.

Jerusalem, between 30 AD and 33 AD

I was baptised a Roman Catholic and was indoctrinated, effectively from birth, via a Catholic school and church until, at around the age of fifteen when I started to rebel. As I’ve grown older, I’ve always been intrigued about the man called Jesus whose teachings I had to learn during that time. My first port of call therefore would be to Jerusalem and the surrounding area in an attempt to find the man himself and work out for myself whether he was just a prophet or whether he was indeed the Son of God.

Rome, 117 AD

I visited Rome in 2012 to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. I have always been fascinated by ancient Roman life and the entire mythos surrounding the Roman Empire, which reached its greatest extent in 117 AD. I learned Latin at school and I often wondered why it was compulsory. I guess it helped me to understand other languages but since it’s been dead for countless years (apart from in the minds of scientists) and it might be nice to hear the language spoken – assuming the Romans actually conversed in Latin that is. I would love just to spend a day wondering around the city, embracing the culture – and trying to avoid being arrested and throw to the lions.

I’d also be a little cheeky and ask him to pop back to 79AD Pompeii, just before Mount Vesuvius erupted. Having walked through the streets of the city a few years ago, I would love to see how the two compare.

England, 1543

Of all the kings and queens of England, the one that fascinates me most is the tyrannical Henry VIII, arguably the most infamous king in our history. He died in 1548 as an enormous bloated caricature of the man depicted in paintings. In 1543, he had just married his last wife, Catherine Parr, and she persuaded him to resolve his issues with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom are almost as infamous as their own father.

I figure that at this stage in his life, he would be most willing to chat to me about his life and what drove him to do the things he did. And it would also give me the opportunity to chat to the two future queens too.

A bunker in Berlin, April 1945

I’m a bit perturbed because although I hate the vitriolic preaching of extremists of any kind, I have a deep and disturbing fascination with them. I do not like them at all – in fact I would go as far as to say I hate them – but I am deeply fascinated by the way their mind works and, in the case of somebody like Adolf Hitler, how he managed to use his charisma to build an army of extremist fanatics, invade most of Europe and start a world war.

I would like to witness his last weeks before the end to see if I could get an insight into his despicable human being. More importantly, I’d like to find out whether he really did die or whether he was, as some conspiracy theorists suggest, managed to escape to Brazil or even to the moon (yes there really are some people who believe that).

A grassy knoll and a warehouse in Dallas, November 1963

I don’t really care about American politics but the apparent mystery surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy has intrigued me, particularly since reading a fictional account of the assassination written by Stephen King, called 11/22/63 (why do American’s show the date the wrong way round?). I would therefore like to just double check who was responsible for the death of JFK. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald or was it an unknown assailant on a grassy knoll? Or maybe even a spaceman or time traveller?

Roswell, July 1948

Travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor would be proof enough that aliens do exist. However, the one episode in history that has spawned numerous conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials was the crash of an object in Roswell, New Mexico. I would just like to see for myself what actually crashed there and what the RAAF actually did with the wreckage and its occupants. Mind you, in truth I would be travelling around in a spaceship with an alien, so that’s a bit of a paradox in itself.

Space (generally ...)

I would ask the Doctor to take me on a voyage around the universe, starting with a slow orbit of Earth itself, a quick tour of all the astronomical bodies in our own solar system before embarking on a journey to any other planets, galactic highlights he saw fit to show me. I would draw the line at stopping on any planet, spaceship or other location likely to plunge me into a life or death situation that only the Doctor could resolve.

Future Technology

One of the main things that irks me about my life is the fact that it is far too short. We only have a limited amount of time alive and, being a massive technophile, I want to see how humanity progresses and the sophisticated gadgetry and technology that we as a species invent and the future. In my own lifetime, the pace of technology has raced ahead incredibly quickly and I imagine that over the next 500 years or so, it will explode – though having used that word, I hope that we don’t invent anything else that can destroy ourselves.

A Library in the Future, say in the year 5000

This would be my final visit and I would implore the Doctor to leave me here for about two years so that I could read up on history and see what happened between now and then. I would be particularly interested to see how future generations thought of those of us (i.e. you and me) and how they interpreted historical events that happened around our time.

I’d also see if I could find any traces of myself and this blog (though thinking about it, that might be a bad idea).

I would then steal a suitable history book and use it in 2015 for my own nefarious and selfish purposes.

I’m sure that the Doctor would stop me from doing that though.

And finally …

To be perfectly honest, I would really like Dr Who to teach me how to use the TARDIS myself and allow me to fly around and appear wherever I wanted to. I think it would be a perilous journey if he were to be the person to decide where we travel to, simply because he seems to be a magnet for destruction, alien invasions and galactic events that threaten our very survival.

He’s a bit of a Jonah to be fair.

The one final thing I would try to do, which would of course be very dangerous, would be to pop back to my own timeline and visit my younger self with a winning lottery ticket. Actually, that would cause a paradox and cause time to collapse in on itself and destroy the entire universe, something the Doctor is keen to avoid. With that in mind I would simply pop forward to next weekend and note down the winning lottery numbers.

I don’t think that would break the universe, do you?

Anyway, enough of that and over to you dear reader.

Where would you go, given the opportunity to travel anywhere in space or time?