Thursday, May 15, 2008

Dissonant cognizance

I was driving from work this afternoon, picking the kids up early (since Sarah's elementary school had an early release).

I was listening to the radio--the NPR/eclectic music station here in the Greater Columbus area (WCBE--listen on the website)--when I heard music that I can only describe as French accordion. What is that exactly? Well, I don't know if you can visualize it, so I poked around on the local website and found the playlist for today's show about the same time that I was driving. Then I searched for a website that could give you a listen. After some trial and error, I found the correct artist, but not the correct song. In any case, you can listen to one of the songs listed at this page to get the flavor of what I'm talking about. (Ain't the Internet grand?)

So, do you have it? That tango-flavored accordion? Put it firmly in your head and then ask yourself? Where, oh where, have you heard music like that? That's immediately what I thought as the music was coming out of my car speakers. I instantly knew that it was related to a movie, but which one? I kept listening but tried to scroll through the movie music memories in my head while holding onto the music playing in the car. What could it be? I finally settled on Fight Club (possible SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen the movie), but as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn't right. It was the best option I'd come up with yet, but it wasn't right. So, I kept trying to figure it out.

Finally, I got it. Do you have it? I'll just link to the answer, in case you don't want to have the answer revealed. And this link presents the snippet of music from the movie that got the entire thought sequence started. (Also, some interesting parallels between Fight Club and the real answer are discussed in the comments.)

ANYWAY, while all of this was going on in my head, I was still driving. Once I got that particular musical problem solved, I noticed something else. As I drove past a subdivision entrance, I saw a groundskeeper pushing a wheelbarrow. I could only see his back, but he was wearing a gray t-shirt with this logo on the back. My immediate thought was, "Hey, that guy must have been in the Army." My next thought was, "that Army logo sure looks a lot like the adidas logo." (Interestingly enough--to me anyway--adidas is one corporation that doesn't use the Helvetica font in its brand logo.)

So, that's the kind of stuff that I was thinking about on my drive to pick up the kids today (and if you think all of that was a confusing set of thoughts, then you should read this).

5 comments:

David said...

One coincidence between Fight Club and 12 Monkeys is that they both feature Brad Pitt. The second is that they both feature a dystopic vision of the future.

Any others?

Anonymous said...

Your nonlinear narrative converges dreamlike images dissimilar and seemingly random but connected, cool, you beatnik, go.

Anonymous said...

alright, i'll swing at that one:
--both include many scenes at night
--both include time confusion
--both include questioned self-identity
--both discuss the blurry spectrum that can exist from activism to terrorism
--both involve some self-mutilation
--both are based on source material (an American novel and a French short film)
--both show the main character in a bathrobe
--and the two stories are set only about 30 mi. apart.

Anonymous said...

to be clear, Fight Club didn't involve terrorism but only massive amounts of simple, virtuous property damage.

David said...

excellent work Jack. You found many parallels that I would never have thought of.