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some of you may recall my strange affair with the Phantom of the Opera...
I feel the need to explore, for my own sake if not for anyone else's, this strange obsession which has bound me off and on for well on 13 years now. It has waxed and waned, and I am a different person in many respects from the one who was first struck, but recent events have conspired to raise the specter within me again. The recent milestone achieved by Lloyd Webber's juggernaut reminds me, as well, that this love affair of mine was sparked by something I don't like anymore and have rejected since I was 16 or so.
So why does it still haunt me?
Okay, so it started with ALW's Phantom when I was starting high school. That was about the same time I found the audiobook at the library (read by F. Murray Abraham). So then came Susan Kay's revisionist masterpiece (*cough*) and my teenage angst and fanfiction (though I didn't know that's what it was at the time) and round-robin stories and relationships I still have born of Phantom. I collected all the movie versions. I'm writing a book on one of them now.
So recently I've been going through some of my old stuff, and it's brought back a strange Phantom love. I thought obsession was gone from my adult, more-or-less-responsible life. Some of it is probably nostalgia. Some of it's probably lj with its communities. Some of it is the fact when I'm supposed to be writing "for real," Phantom fiction comes really easily. Or maybe it's the fact I've married a guy who keeps an organ in the basement. I've been rewatching old videos. I bought a Lon Chaney figure. I feel a certain, familiar warmth when I pick up the book or watch Chaney's movie (in new special edition restored version, no less).
But why? Why, when I can't stomach the fanfic, can't listen to the musical, deride most of the forms the story comes in, and should be doing other things? When I, unlike my teenage self, have a life, a partner, my own home, a job, and creative pursuits coming out my ears?
What the hell is this Phantom guy still doing here?
I don't expect all of you to relate immediately to what I'm saying. But I'm sure you've had an obsession or two which has behaved funny later on, like an acid flashback or something. Not that I've ever had one.
I like being obsessive, to a point. I like have something to mull over. But does it have to be so stupid? Why can't it be something I actually like? Why this?
PS--Melly or Moco, you'd better have something to say to me about this.
So why does it still haunt me?
Okay, so it started with ALW's Phantom when I was starting high school. That was about the same time I found the audiobook at the library (read by F. Murray Abraham). So then came Susan Kay's revisionist masterpiece (*cough*) and my teenage angst and fanfiction (though I didn't know that's what it was at the time) and round-robin stories and relationships I still have born of Phantom. I collected all the movie versions. I'm writing a book on one of them now.
So recently I've been going through some of my old stuff, and it's brought back a strange Phantom love. I thought obsession was gone from my adult, more-or-less-responsible life. Some of it is probably nostalgia. Some of it's probably lj with its communities. Some of it is the fact when I'm supposed to be writing "for real," Phantom fiction comes really easily. Or maybe it's the fact I've married a guy who keeps an organ in the basement. I've been rewatching old videos. I bought a Lon Chaney figure. I feel a certain, familiar warmth when I pick up the book or watch Chaney's movie (in new special edition restored version, no less).
But why? Why, when I can't stomach the fanfic, can't listen to the musical, deride most of the forms the story comes in, and should be doing other things? When I, unlike my teenage self, have a life, a partner, my own home, a job, and creative pursuits coming out my ears?
What the hell is this Phantom guy still doing here?
I don't expect all of you to relate immediately to what I'm saying. But I'm sure you've had an obsession or two which has behaved funny later on, like an acid flashback or something. Not that I've ever had one.
I like being obsessive, to a point. I like have something to mull over. But does it have to be so stupid? Why can't it be something I actually like? Why this?
PS--Melly or Moco, you'd better have something to say to me about this.
Yep, your myth....
Currently with Phantom.... I still think about it occasionally. I am aware of the way in which it has informed other interests and *was* informed by them (ie--I read about Hephaestos in my myth class, and said to myself, DAMN BUT HE'S A LOT LIKE ERIK! and then decided that may have been partly because various Phantom incarnations were consciously modelled on the myth). . . Every so often I'm tempted to start writing fan-fiction, but generally get distracted before anything more comes of it than an amusing spoken narrative to Moco (along the lines of "Wouldn't it be cool to write a phiction in which..... we should do that. yup. Someday...") . I still like both Leroux and Susan Kay's work, for what it is. (I've turned into an inveterate relativist) I'm less fond of ALW, but then again I always was.
I'm still rather into my orc phase, actually, it's just not as fruitful right now because my circumstances have changed. Orcs are intimately associated with going through hell, so to speak, for me. They are *powerful* archetypes, figures that can withstand death and danger and torment with an amusingly casual approach: "Hmph. Everyone we love is dead... Ack. Well, shit becomes us. Pick up the bones, we're marching out."
Erik tends to be an archetype for angst and ennui and this endless feeling of alienation -- an outsider -- it's something I needed to support me when I was younger and living in my family. It's about being unable to relate to others... I'm invoking it more now that I'm back in school and just feel oddly unseen and isolated all the time. Erik tends to be much more passive, oddly -- or passive aggressive, I suppose (He kills people without letting them see his face, for example... and he's always "escaping" rather than "facing" situations) -- The orcs, on the other hand, are not invisible ("haha! That would be good, yes!") . . . but they are actively threatened and harmed, and somehow withstand that. Erik is also very powerful in that he is *able* to just kill his enemies and move on... they aren't ever really *winning* against him... I'm not sure I'm explaining this well.
Re: Yep, your myth....
I would never consider picking up the orcs as a useful archetype; but I'm not embattled, either. I should look into "invoking" more actively, however, now that I think about it. For my writing, or "career," or whatever.
Actually, in terms of Phantom, I don't relate to much of anyone but the Persian. I realized that in my writing I will write these main characters with all this angst but the one I relate to, the one who's "me" more than anything else, is the concerned observer who is fascinated by the other's struggle. The Mark character, in Rent terms.
If I'm anyone, it's the Persian.
Speaking of whom...