So I had a synchronistic epiphany this past weekend, which seems to have come in answer to my present breakthroughs as to the meaning and purpose of the Sibylline saga. I'm still running the numbers, but so far it looks like I'm on the right path.
But I had this weird notion that I had to go to the used book store on Friday, though I wasn’t sure why.
I’ve had these notions before, and experienced some powerful synchronicities out of them. But it was getting late, so the missus and I decided to hit the county seat for some window-shopping and a very nice Italian supper instead. But I couldn’t shake the feeing that there was something calling me out the used book store, so we went on Saturday.
The full enormity of it didn’t hit me until later. I’d been getting back on the 1983 question again, having posted a series on Wavelength, and preparing for the final season of Stranger Things (which begins next month).
I’d also had a major breakthrough on the Sibyl issue, with a major new piece of the puzzle making itself known to me while I was looking into a completely separate issue altogether (which is the way it always happens). And my experience seeing the reconstituted Big Country in June also has kicked up a lot of lingering synchro-dust, not to mention the Mystery Hour I’m planning with Doctor Jones on The Police’s swan-song, Synchronicity.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I saw a small box of around 50 or 60 comic books at the used book store, on sale for a dollar apiece. This was certainly unusual, because a number of the books are key issues that usually go for a lot more than a dollar, and all the comics were in very fine (or better) condition. The store in question usually ratchets up the prices on comics way above guide, so this was a real coup.
Then imagine my surprise when I realized most of the comics in the box were from 1983.
Then imagine how I felt when I realized that nearly all of them were comics I’d have been reading in November of 1983 (when I first heard the Sibyl), even if some had been released in 1982 (especially the beyond-insane Jack Kirby comics).
XF-ULTRA is an exhaustive and obsessive guide to the only TV series that really matters, going places no other book dare go. Whether you're already a hardcore X-Files fan or just a novice, this is the one book you have to read to truly understand what you're seeing play out on your screen.
We'll be diving deeper into the Year that Broke Reality in November (to coincide with the final season of Stranger Things), and getting into a lot of the strange messaging that emerged through the pop culture trash stratum that pivotal year, including in film.
So while I grind away on that, here's a refresher on some of the weird films on 1983. We'll be putting this all into a much larger context, but this is a great place to start:
The seeds for 1983 were planted a very long time ago, and the process that flowered that year first began to bloom in 1979. So it's no surprise that two pictures that best encapsulated the elusive energies and forces that emerged in 1983 were actually produced in 1981.
Liquid Sky and Wavelength look at the same phenomena, but from Manhattan and Hollywood POV's, respectively. The former was largely shot in a five-block radius between Danceteria and the Koreatown brownstone penthouse the film's lead lives in. The latter is largely set in Laurel Canyon and the mysterious Lookout Mountain complex familiar to Dave McGowan readers.
The energies emanating from both locations would start to spread all over the world in 1983.
How weird was 1983? It was so weird that David Cronenberg released two movies. The only other time that happened?
1979, of course.
Videodrome might seem more than a bit dated today, but only if you don't transpose the basic themes Cronenberg was exploring from the cable TV age to the social media age. It's actually more timely now than it was in 1983, if examined in that context.
The Dead Zone is an excellent film on its own, but has become all the more important in light of what we now know about the remote viewing programs running at the time under the aegis of INSCOM, or the US Army Intelligence and Security Command.
That connection isn't explicit, but hovers over the film all the same.
Consider the fact that both The Dead Zone and Brainstorm were released within weeks of each other, and that both starred Christopher Walken, even though Brainstorm had also been made in 1981 and was shelved after the drowning death of co-star Natalie Wood.
Then consider that Brainstorm was directed by Douglas Trumbull, who was responsible for many of the special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters, and was based on a premise written by Bruce Joel Rubin of Jacob's Ladder and Deep Impact fame.
Then consider that the Esalen Institute played a major role in the making of Brainstorm, and looms over many other films that year.
Then remember that Esalen was being run by the Council of Nine channeling cult at the time.
1983, everyone.
WarGames came out in March and anticipated the aforementioned apocalyptic near-misses a few months later. It's also the first major exposure the early hacking underground got, at least that I can recall.
Ally Sheedy first grabbed me by the attention when she guest-starred as a very naughty schoolgirl on Hill Street Blues, also in 1983. Later she'd star in a very 1983-worthy -- and microbe-themed -- episode of The Outer Limits along with Peter Proud himself.
The Hunger, based on a Whitley Streiber novel, was released shortly after AIDS had been declared to be an identifiable syndrome but has since been seen to be a prophetic allegory of such. But it also coincided with the rise of Goth as an identifiable subculture (as opposed to just a subgenus of post-punk).
Bauhaus, who perform the film's opening theme, didn't stick around to capitalize on first-wave Goth, having split after underwhelming 1983 LP Burning from the Inside, recorded while Peter Murphy was stricken with pneumonia.
A disease, incidentally, that would come to grim prominence in 1983.
1983 would have an impact both on Whitley Streiber and the world with the start of the Hudson Valley UFO wave, which lasted for several years. Streiber would document his own UFO wave in his Hudson Valley vacation home in the 1987 blockbuster Communion.
That book would make alien abduction a household world and later be adapted into a film starring -- you guessed it -- Christopher Walken.
