Art by Joey Feldman
Words by CB Bellerose
The waking moments had images of a two-panel strip already embedded in my mind. A little boy in the late seventies swooshing around the living room with a huge plastic X-Wing fighter, R2-D2 using every servo to keep from jettisoning under the massive G forces. An imaginary galaxy filled with dogfighting spacecraft taking the place of the mundane surroundings that make up the tacky wallpapered room.
The next panel inhabited by a beaten down adult under the shadow of the hell we never realized was waiting at the other end of that bleak 40-year rainbow. He tries frantically to escape back to that place, comedically wringing a cheap new X-Wing for any possible drop of fantasy. Above him in the shadows are words like Mortgage, Health Care, Racism, Security, and Death.
I get my eyes opened and reach for my iPhone to make a sketch, completely taking for granted the irony that we can relate to the poor bastard and yet technology we overlook every day far exceeded what we thought we were promised in our youth. David Bowie died.
Let me get this sketch down and I’ll return to that, okay? Let me fact check this first… CNN, damnit. I rarely ever go to the mass media for anything other than ideas when the well runs low. Today it’s just another sad affirmation. This is going to require a cigarette before I continue. On the porch, attentive to the constant lump I’ve had in my throat since June… I’ll get on that eventually, important things first, I have work to do….
I plow through every bit of information available for a five minute search. Maybe coffee next, maybe let my dog out so I don’t have to clean piss of the hardwood. Basement door is open, he’ll go down on the concrete if the dam bursts. He’ll make it easy for me, learned that when I sit down to type it’s a major event. What I realize in those early moments is that we are all like that boy in the comic, parts of our youth are indeed magic. We find happiness in the fantasy that our future will still be held in the hands of rock stars and Goblin Kings, space travels and painted heroes.
Today we find that, in those things that many conspire to entertain us with we are ensured that future, but those who supply that magic on an individual basis, we suffer a loss we may not see or hear immediately, but will ever more wring what we have left to keep the magic alive for ourselves.