The Twilight Zone - We are all Living in our own Reality - Are you Awake?
This morning, after checking in on Discord, I saw a message by @whatamidoing , posted under his creative alter ego 'ipluseverything' :
As you can read in the above screenshot, he was already gone by the time I replied. Two hours later, I got back to the chat and tried to reach out to him again, to no avail. I am still waiting for a reply.
Talking about that ancient PC game post - Dangerous Dave - that popped up into my mind.... It was written at a time when I was trying my hand on gaming posts. If you like that type of content, here's links to all my previous gaming posts:
My Favorite PC Games - Part 1 Back to the 80s
My Favorite PC Games - Part 2 Back to the 90s - Lotus
My Favorite PC Games - Part 3 Skyroads (1993)
My Favorite PC Games - Part 4 Titus the Fox (1992)
My Favorite PC Games - Part 5 Prince of Persia (1990)
My Favorite PC Games - Part 6 - Dangerous Dave (1990)
My Favorite PC Games - Part 7 Winter Challenge (1991)
Creepy PC Games from the 1990s Part 1
Creepy PC Games from the 1990s Part 2
Practicing Portuguese by Playing my Brother's Indie Game 'Minit'
BACK TO THE TWILIGHT ZONE
To get back to my chat with @whatamidoing ... I mentioned the word 'twilight zone' and while most of you will probably think of the notorious sci fi series ( whether it's the 1980s version or movie, or its black and white predecessor from the 1950s and 1960s* ), in my case it made me remember the previously mentioned PC game Dangerous Dave (1990), which was one of the first games I played on a PC, probably in the very early 1990s.
I'm not completely sure if the word 'twilight zone' is used in-game but I believe it is, as I have a vague memory of asking my mom ( who grew up in English speaking countries ) what this meant. No matter what, it sounded mysterious to me and whenever I see or hear the word twilight zone these days it still has a mysterious feel for me :>)
Another connotation I have with 'Twilight Zone' is the pop song by a band called Golden Earring. Fun fact: Golden Earring is a Dutch band. In the early 1990s - when I was at the end of primary school - it's frontman / lead vocalist, Barry Hay, visited my class. One of my classmates was doing an assignment on Golden Earring. Back then, I wasn't into music, but I still remember this rock star, golden earring and all, sitting in our classroom.
'Twilight Zone' is probably this group's most famous song. So whenever I hear or read the term twilight zone, I have to think of Golden Earring and vice versa.
Twilight Zone appears to be a 1982 song and I am from 1981, so the memories I have of it are probably from way later ( late 1980s / early 1990s ).
If I need to believe Wikipedia, the song was inspired by the book 'The Bourne Identity' and a tribute to the 1950s/1960s TV series.
Here's the song's lyrics:
"Twilight Zone"
Somewhere in a lonely hotel room there's a guy starting to realize that eternal fate has turned its back on him.
It's two A.M.
It's two A.M., it's two A.M
The fear has gone, the fear has gone
I'm sittin' here waitin', the gun's still warm
Sittin' here waitin', the gun's still warm
Maybe my connection is tired of takin' chances
Yeah there's a storm on the loose, sirens in my head
Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead
Cannot decode, my whole life spins into a frenzy
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
I'm falling down the spiral, destination unknown
Double-crossed messenger, all alone
Can't get no connection, can't get through, where are you
Well the night weighs heavy on his guilty mind
This far from the borderline
When the hitman comes
He knows damn well he has been cheated
And he says
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
I must admit that I've never studied it's lyrics closely before. I really like what I read. They give off a scifi, film noir kind of feel.
Now back to my chat with @whatamidoing
He asked me if I was 'Awake'. The word awake is often used in mindfulness and referring to being in the now, the opposite of the zombie kind of state that many of us are in most of the time. Which reminds me of my movie write up from two days ago about John Carpenter's 'They Live' where I wrote:
The 1988 They Live ( Yes! The 1980s were a fun decade for movies ) isn't about zombies, but it definitely talks about people being brainwashed into consumption, obeying authority, serving the riches and so on and so forth. It's more of a sci-fi film though, as it talks about aliens that have taken over the earth and who make us serve them, with the majority of people being blind to this 'truth'.
When whatamidoing asked me if I was 'awake' he wasn't referring to this kind of 'awake', but - as I meant to write a #mindfulmonday post yesterday and couldn't find the time to do so, I decided to make up for it today. My brain connected all the dots ( awake - twilight zone - pc game - golden earring - they live - brainwashing - being awake and so on and so forth... ) and it lead to this inspired write up.
So, to summarize the above, I am doing my best to be awake as often as possible. Daily meditation definitely helps with that. Besides using the Calm app on my phone, I started taking part in a 21 day meditation challenge ( with the theme 'abundance' ), starting yesterday, via Whatsapp.
It feels good to be awake, but I'm very much a dreamer too. I have always been a dreamer. There's a difference though between living in a nightmare and being stuck in negative, unhelpful, depressing thought patterns ( the me from the past ) and dreaming up a better future ( the me from the recent past and the current Vincent. Since I started to believe that you can improve and create your own life by way of mindful thinking and changing ( the direction ) of your thoughts whenever you can, I have been enjoying my less awake moments, my daydreaming more and more.
Now let me ask you:
Are you awake?
Or are you still dreaming?
And if you're dreaming, how does your dream feel? Is it a nightmare or a happy dream?
*I just found out there's a new Twilight Zone series available. It aired this year!
Click here to watch a trailer
I just watched it and liked what I see. I'm curious if Seth Rogen can act in a non comedy and get rid of his typecasting. I don't like the text at the end of the trailer though: 'Only on CBS All Access'. I have no doubt it will be available in other places in the neat future though. Or perhaps, in the twilight zone.
More info on the new 'The Twilight Zone':
How do you know that's not what I meant ;-P
We are all living in our own realities, each being is a universe, but we overlap and intersect which is what life is. Just trying to overlap in more interesting ways!
Hahaha! Overlapping in more interesting ways sounds like the right way to do it :>)
Ah that song was so 80s it made my ears bleed....
Funny the thought trains we have!!! Good on yoi for doing a meditation challenge. The insight timer app is amazing too. Have you tried it?
Awake..? Hmmm. Trying. Easy to get distracted. But really like trying to stay on path.
Sorry for the ear bleed.
I think I used the insight timer app for a while, half a year ago but there was some thing I didn't like about it and I deleted it again. I might just prefer Calm and Spotify.
Don't try on the path too much. Straying from the path can be way more interesting. Just make sure you don't get the wolf catch you ;>)
Reminds me of the NES. Have you heard of elite? Used to play that and frontier a lot when i was a kid. Sometimes i feel that my dream state is like my waking state. What if we just turn into pure waves of energy unbound by time and connected to everything? Like as if we could instantly teleport during REM instantaneously?
I never had a NES, or any other console, not even a Gameboy. Funny that my younger brother turned into a game maker, at the start of this century :>)
What if... everything was indeed possible?
Perhaps we are actually teleporting when we think we are dreaming :>)
Ooo you are in games too, nice. Is that Mario in the convo pic or some game like Mario?
It's ( Dangerous ) Dave and there were some similarities with Mario but this guy has a jetpack haha
P.S. My gaming days are long behind me but my younger brother is a successful indie gamemaker :>)
Wow a gamemaker brother, sounds cool.
It is. I tried to learn to make computer games myself, in the late 1990s but never really got into it. A couple of years later, when my brother was only 10 or 11, he downloaded a freeware program called 'Gamemaker' and started making games almost daily. Less than 10 years later, he became successful due to his first game: Super Crate Box:
Source
And yes, it's pretty cool to have a gamemaking brother :>)
Wooh nice, Although I dont know about the crate game, but coollllll stuff.