Utter downer.
Jun. 23rd, 2006 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_dreamsSo. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wicked_wish posted a link to a collection of 80s music videos.
This is new and wonderful. See, I had a TV while we were growing up. But it had four channels--no cable--and I think the most attention I ever paid to it was betting my Dad that I could go without watching TV for a year and winning.
So I know the songs, but I've never seen most of the videos. Actually, I don't think I've seen any of the videos they have; the site only seems to have one per artist.
And most of them are pretty ineffective. But I liked Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". It's not a happy song. It's fun to listen to and fun to watch, cheerful little beat and a bunch of bright pictures, but it's not a happy song. One of the clips in the video is Joel sitting in front of a huge (slowly burning) blow-up of a black-and-white picture of a man tied up, pulled one way and another by ropes. There were a couple of others I'm sure I should have recognized.
So I went browsing. Dug up the photo of the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. And the one of St. Paul's surrounded and rising through the flames in the Blitz.
And now I'm listening to the Jonestown death tape.
Jim Jones has a slight lisp.
He told his followers "We are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act."
(This is about the time when I started typing this up. Get at least some of it out as it comes in.)
---
An unidentified man has just cried out, in a weepy and passionate voice, "We're all ready to go! If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we're ready! I'm pretty sure all the rest of th'sisters and brothers are with me."
The tape quality is not great. It catches a couple of times, and occasionally it warbles. The warbles would probably sound like a cheesy evil computer overlord sound effect in a cheap video game if I were hearing it anywhere else. When Jones is speaking, they turn his voice into something insectile and inhuman, wind in the trees faking human words.
---
John has just brought me a beer. I will treat it as medicinal right now.
(As I typed that, Jones has just asked someone to "please get us some medication." I do not think he will refer to it as anything else for the rest of the tape. I don't think anyone else will either.)
---
A man is talking about how death is peaceful, while another one is explaining that it will "give them a little rest". A child just screamed in the background. I think I heard a woman start to cry.
Another woman has just started explaining that this is not something to cry about, but something to rejoice about. People are applauding.
---
"This is not a self-destructive suicide. So they'll pay for this. They brought this upon us and they'll pay for that."
---
Oh. Good. Doing it for the children.
They're starting to scream and cry, the children.
---
Less loudly now. I think I hear something like hymn music. I think they had a radio in there? Maybe another tape player?
It's not what he's saying but how he's saying it that sounds so *normal*. So entirely sane. He swallows his sentances a little, tries to sound polite, has a kind of earnestness to it. It's a way of speaking that I could expect to see in a meeting at work, with one person spearheading the argument for a particular way to approach a project.
He's stopped speaking now.
Yes. Hymn music.
Something else, either the tape going off or a very far away newscast.
Thin high notes, very faint.
Tape ends.
wicked_wish posted a link to a collection of 80s music videos.This is new and wonderful. See, I had a TV while we were growing up. But it had four channels--no cable--and I think the most attention I ever paid to it was betting my Dad that I could go without watching TV for a year and winning.
So I know the songs, but I've never seen most of the videos. Actually, I don't think I've seen any of the videos they have; the site only seems to have one per artist.
And most of them are pretty ineffective. But I liked Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". It's not a happy song. It's fun to listen to and fun to watch, cheerful little beat and a bunch of bright pictures, but it's not a happy song. One of the clips in the video is Joel sitting in front of a huge (slowly burning) blow-up of a black-and-white picture of a man tied up, pulled one way and another by ropes. There were a couple of others I'm sure I should have recognized.
So I went browsing. Dug up the photo of the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. And the one of St. Paul's surrounded and rising through the flames in the Blitz.
And now I'm listening to the Jonestown death tape.
Jim Jones has a slight lisp.
He told his followers "We are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act."
(This is about the time when I started typing this up. Get at least some of it out as it comes in.)
---
An unidentified man has just cried out, in a weepy and passionate voice, "We're all ready to go! If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we're ready! I'm pretty sure all the rest of th'sisters and brothers are with me."
The tape quality is not great. It catches a couple of times, and occasionally it warbles. The warbles would probably sound like a cheesy evil computer overlord sound effect in a cheap video game if I were hearing it anywhere else. When Jones is speaking, they turn his voice into something insectile and inhuman, wind in the trees faking human words.
---
John has just brought me a beer. I will treat it as medicinal right now.
(As I typed that, Jones has just asked someone to "please get us some medication." I do not think he will refer to it as anything else for the rest of the tape. I don't think anyone else will either.)
---
A man is talking about how death is peaceful, while another one is explaining that it will "give them a little rest". A child just screamed in the background. I think I heard a woman start to cry.
Another woman has just started explaining that this is not something to cry about, but something to rejoice about. People are applauding.
---
"This is not a self-destructive suicide. So they'll pay for this. They brought this upon us and they'll pay for that."
---
Oh. Good. Doing it for the children.
They're starting to scream and cry, the children.
---
Less loudly now. I think I hear something like hymn music. I think they had a radio in there? Maybe another tape player?
It's not what he's saying but how he's saying it that sounds so *normal*. So entirely sane. He swallows his sentances a little, tries to sound polite, has a kind of earnestness to it. It's a way of speaking that I could expect to see in a meeting at work, with one person spearheading the argument for a particular way to approach a project.
He's stopped speaking now.
Yes. Hymn music.
Something else, either the tape going off or a very far away newscast.
Thin high notes, very faint.
Tape ends.
