Seduced By Sanity.

Flagrant Disregard.











When I was growing up there was a show called “Tales From the Darkside” that played late on Sunday afternoons, just in time to correspond with the zoned-out despair I’d fall into as I realized the weekend was over. The show was a cheap rip-off of The Twilight Zone, with a b-movie horror aesthetic. I didn’t care. I’d watch anything. I don’t remember any of the individual episodes, just the last bit of the creepy opening sequence, which always managed to send a chill up my spine: there was a montage of everyday scenes (I think there was a flower, and then a doorway) turned sinister by a simple inversion effect in which dark areas became light and vice-versa. The announcer droned out the following speech:

"Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But... there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit... a Darkside."

The last shot was that of a pleasant looking, tree-lined pasture. To the accompaniment of minor chords on a cheesy synth organ, the picture inverted before my eyes…the darkness seemed to leak out from the spaces in between objects—it oozed forth, hungrily…

This resonated with me: By the time I was ten I’d spent a lot of time outdoors by myself. More than once I’d had the sensation of being in a big space devoid of other people when all of a sudden and without warning, something changed. To this day I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s as if there’s a tingle in the air—the predatory presence of something larger than life breathing down my neck.

It’s here but it’s invisible, I’d think--a mysterious something that’s slipping through the scene, in and out, like a bad smell on a windy day. At such moments I stood completely still and felt the hair stand up on my arms. I can’t see it but I can feel it, I told myself, as I tightened my fists and wondered if whatever it was I’d been secretly waiting for was finally about to start…

And then it was gone. The hair on my arms went down. Shadows returned to being merely shadows, the air went back to being regular air, and I was all alone again in a world too boring to be believed.