I always wanted to be action hero. That’s been my dream. My impossible dream. And it’s all because I was a chronic daydreamer.
I’m not sure when I discovered that daydreaming was necessarily part of everyone’s life. I think it’s when I heard about “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and realized that the movie/story was such a big deal because not everybody escaped behind their eyelids. What a crazy disease, I thought. Not being able to daydream!
When I was young, I used to do it all the time. Sort of like one of those powers from the Super Friends that wasn’t quite in control yet. People could be having a full on conversation with me and I would be in my head, daydreaming about having Michael Jackson’s children, complete with their mini glitter gloves. In fact, most of my daydreams back then were about love. Deep love. Obsessive love. The kind of love that literally makes you cover your ENTIRE wall with pictures of somebody that you’ve never met. Ever. The kind of love that makes your insides pang with want (at the time, you have no idea that the pang has NOTHING to do with the object of your affection—this I will learn when I start dating, ay. That’s another story). But everything changed when I got my first pair of headphones.
Let me preface all of this by letting you know that my household was one that was FILLED with records. I mean, I went to bed with Teddy Pendergrass’s record cover for a week straight once. And I think I’ve memorized a few of Luther Vandross’s. And how can you EVER forget the record covers of Lakeside (“Come alonnggg and ride on the fantastic voyage….”), Roy Ayers (I really wanted to be that woman covered in gold) or Michael Franks (and his strange soft pastels that were about as light as his voice)? So when I got my headphones, I created a world that NOBODY else could be in.
First it started with getting lost in the music. Then I made up stories. And this, ladies and gentlemen, this is where it all went in a crazy direction. I made my own stories according to the music. I can tell you my videos-in-the-head for most major songs (this is where the action hero star stuff comes into play, pay attention):
Soul II Soul, “Back To Life”:
T. Tara stars as a driver for a heist team when everything goes awry and she’s forced to drive the streets of the city to rescue her squad (I’m not joking).
OR
T. Tara stars as a vampire assassin. Video opens with T. Tara standing on top of a high building during Mad Max times. T. Tara has just finished praying as Caron Wheeler finishes up her acapella. Then T. Tara swings through the empty streets after the bad guy.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, “All Around the World”:
T. Tara stars as a member of a team of special ops that get dangerous criminals off the streets of a futuristic city a la Fifth Element with its hydro craft and streets in the sky. At the guitar break, T. Tara runs like Jackie Joyner-Kersee to get some criminals that have just passed her and her team at dinner (alerted to the criminals proximity by a special criminal detector watch—right). Criminals caught! Then, as they reach their 2001-like home base, some crazy large monster criminal is there to threaten the team. T. Tara slides into the outdoor chamber (like that movie with Laurence Fishburne where the ship is alive) and beats up the criminal with her capoeira skills. What!!?!?!?!?
Thelma Houston, “Don’t Leave Me This Way”:
Um, basically this daydream is called “Dancing with T. Tara.” I am obviously a multi-talented ballroom dancer who’s rocking the crazy tango to a disco song.
Bad Boy, “Victory”:
Yes, rap does it for me too. In this one, I’m starring as a special ops helicopter pilot (think Trinity in the first “Matrix”) who’s trying to rescue some folks stuck in a war zone.
Sting, “Desert Rose””
T. Tara stars as a princess of a desert nomadic tribe who’s been given some kind of poison that makes her paralyzed. Her ex-boyfriend/warrior takes her through the dangers of the desert (thieves, fires, any kind of Mad Max stuff you can think of) to find the cure. Of course, at the break of the song, she regains her strength just in time to fight the tribe that has surrounded them. Can somebody say Xena?
Okay, that’s enough to give you a picture of my secret desire (not so secret anymore). I got to action movies partly because my Dad loved them and partly because I will, without hesitancy, steal some of the battle scenes for my video-in-the head. My heart rate goes up, my palms get sweaty. This is how I work out! I day dream action hero sequences. I had to stop using the treadmill because sometimes my feet would go too fast and I’d fall off because I was in the Thunderdome in my head!
Why, Jacquetta will ask, is this a dream deferred (our challenge this time)? Easy. I will never be an action hero. Real action heroes don’t have movies. They fight in dumb wars for armchair activists on the left and the right. We don’t really know their names unless they die from “friendly” fire. They might go set up villages in remote countries most Americans can’t spell (either because we don’t care to, are too lazy to learn to or because we actually believe everything we read) BUT when they come back they face totally not having the job they had before, like welding Ford car parts together. Think about it, Rambo would totally be living in Indianapolis facing plant shutdowns and trying to calculate his pension (if it still exists) or his severance pay (if they still have to give and he didn’t hold out for more money only to find out there isn’t any). He’s probably be in the middle of a divorce because his wife totally cracked under the pressure of him not having a job and her trying to not be resentful but feeling guilty because she is. Then he ends up homeless cause he looses his house because he was a part time farmer and we don’t care about farmers in this country, obviously, or else we’d actually buy from them and not get our food from overseas all the time. Then he’d go into a mental institution but that would close down and put him out on the street in his gown with his stuff in a plastic bag. Then he’d arrested for arson, for setting an empty building on fire when he was trying to keep warm. Please note that this story could change depending on Rambo’s last name. If it’s Sanchez or Lopez and he just got to this country like yesterday after having fought in his country’s original war, then he’d be a felon, according to the new law they’re trying to pass. AND, if he’s from Mexico, we’re calling him an immigrant even though this whole side of the country was once Mexico and we got it by trumping up a false war when we find out “there was gold in them thar hills.” And most of us black people can’t be immigrants if we were forced here. Native Americans aren’t immigrants but they live like they are on reservations. Most Jewish and Irish people were confined to “ghettos” when they first got here because the original boat people (most white people who can find an ancestor on one of those big OG cruise ships) didn’t want them in their neighborhoods. This is all so confusing and fucked up if we had to explain this to an alien who landed. Or our children. Sigh.
So this is why my dream is deferred. Action heroes only exist in my head, and in the movies. We’re all just people on earth.
So now there’s different colors
And there’s different breedsAnd different people
Have different needs
It’s obvious you hate me
Though I’ve done nothing wrong
I’ve never even met you
So what I could I have done
–Depeche Mode
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I used to tape the songs on the radio and then tape myself dj-ing in between. A lot of time alone….
What the next task?
Comment by Webstar — April 11, 2006 @ 12:09 am