Synchromysticism

" Synchromysticism:
The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance."

- Jake Kotze

August 24, 2015

The Clockwork Orange Effect?

I was sorting through my large CD collection recently just after moving house and came across the above Phil Collins CD Serious Hits Live.
I bought it years ago because it contained the song, I picked out with my wife to have as our wedding waltz.
Song #13 on the album ironically enough looking back now.
I used to really love this song once, but now when I hear it come on the radio it makes me want to race over a switch the radio off, or on to another station, and if I can't do that I start becoming mildly sick and irritated, obviously because it dredges up bad memories ... or rather memories that were once good and I was fond of, but now leaves me feeling hollow and angry.
Love on the Rocks ... A Fool's Journey?
This phenomena reminded me of a movie I snuck into the cinema to see when I was about 17 years old, with my older brother's birth certificate, as you had to be at least 18 to get in.
That movie was A Clockwork Orange"In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem - but not all goes according to plan."
I hated A Clockwork Orange when I first saw it and came out of the cinema feeling repulsed and angry, because Kubrick wrecked a song that was a mild favourite of mine - Singing in the Rain
In the movie there is a disturbing rape scene where the main character, Alex, beats up the husband of a lady he rapes in front of him to the song Singing in the Rain.
I could never to this day hear the song Singing in the Rain without recalling that ugly scene from A Clockwork Orange.
Which was what Kubrick was aiming to do by using this famous much loved happy song, in my opinion, because the film is all about making the main character sick to the stomach when he hears his once favourite music, or even thinks about doing a violent act to others.
This is all because he is strapped into a chair and forced to watch violent scenes while his favourite music is played to the film while doctors pump drugs into him that makes him violently sick, so in the future when Alex hears his once favourite music or thinks about doing a violent act, he immediately becomes ill.
 So, Kubrick basically pulled the same trick on anybody in the audience who associated the song Singing in the Rain to being happy and carefree.
Now when you heard it you would be hard pressed not thinking about that scene from A Clockwork Orange.
So it is with me when I hear A Goovy Kind of Love being played now, it just makes me feel ill.
Needless to say this CD will not be staying in my CD collection any longer.

8 comments:

  1. Yes, I agree, we can be conditioned to associate ugly experiences and memories with mundane lovely or harmless other elements of our life. You give a good examples.

    Believe it or not, I find I experience the same thing when I read your blog and discover, once again, that your commas are not followed by spaces. I try and try to read you, but I am thrown off by that habit of yours, almost as if you are trying our patience on purpose. To me it is like fingernails drawn across a chalkboard.

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  2. Ha,ha,that's what you get when you let a high school drop-out loose on a blog I guess, Loren.
    I've never heard of the "commas followed by spaces" rule...then again I never paid that much attention to what my poor teachers tried teaching me in high school.
    Maybe I'll have to go back through my blog posts and put in the space after each comma,but old habits die hard,I guess. ;-)
    Maybe you'll just have to buy some ear plugs to read my posts ?
    I'm sure there are a lot more things I'm doing wrong as far as spelling and punctuation goes,but I'm sure the educated readers can mentally correct those errors in their minds as they read my uneducated rants.

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  3. I'll try to remember the comma rule in future posts,so people won't have to put up with my nails on a chalkboard habit. :-)

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  4. Oops ! That may be a hard habit for me to break, but I'll try.

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  5. Hi Darren, the minute I saw your PIC of the album I immediately remembered some experience s of my own! In Dismaland, I've recorded it, but can't post it, they continually play Mr Sandman, the Back to the Future version, amongst other things, on loud speakers, in a surreal atmosphere it freaked me out a bit as I walked around the old pool I remembered visiting as a kid in that same place!

    Marie

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  6. Yeah,that merry-go-round on Phil's cover reminded me of the Dismaland merry-go-round images I was seeing, which is why I added the photo at the bottom of the post a day or two after I wrote the post.
    I love those two posts of yours on Dismaland on your blog by the way Marie.
    I'll soon be doing a post about Dismaland on this blog soon.
    I have about six posts that I'm writing at the moment, so I don't know when I'll have any of them ready...but stay tuned.
    Writing of Back to the Future Marie,did you see Joe Alexander's latest BTTF video ? -
    http://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/back-to-future-predicts-911.html
    I'm one of the Darrens that gets a credit for helping Joe out with some of the info on the video...although there is a movie length video coming out soon, so Joe says.
    Hopefully there will be some other bits of information coming out in that version that I shared with him.

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  7. Just in case Loren tries to delete his comment from this post (as he has a habit of doing in other groups to cover his tracks) I've copied it so it is preserved here, just in case just to show you readers what an arsehole he can be. ;-)
    "Loren Coleman said...

    Yes, I agree, we can be conditioned to associate ugly experiences and memories with mundane lovely or harmless other elements of our life. You give a good examples.

    Believe it or not, I find I experience the same thing when I read your blog and discover, once again, that your commas are not followed by spaces. I try and try to read you, but I am thrown off by that habit of yours, almost as if you are trying our patience on purpose. To me it is like fingernails drawn across a chalkboard.
    10:16 PM, August 24, 2015"

    ReplyDelete