Monday, May 09, 2005
GO ASK ALICE
This weekend I went to a junior high school production of Alice In Wonderland. I was biased of course, because my niece stole the show as the Caterpillar, but I enjoyed the production immensely. Lewis Carroll's enduring classic tale of paranoia transcends the ages much the way Shakespeare does. We are bound to Time and Space, and Lewis doesn't let you forget it. Post Sixties, it's hard to remove the 'psychedelic' from Alice, that decade has changed Carroll's work forever. One cannot resist the urging from our subconscious to FEED YOUR HEAD, as Grace Slick suggested, and one shouldn't bother, because the shoe fits. ALICE is about discomfort, being out of place, and the inability to do anything about it. Sounds like an acid trip to me, but it has more to do, on it's surface, with the dream state. We've all had those dreams, running but not getting anywhere, asking questions that don't get answered, or at least to our satisfaction, which relate to paranoia. Opium use was rampant in Victorian England, so the question of drug references in ALICE date back to it's original composition. Was Lewis an opium smoker - we do not know for sure, but it seems highly likely, the effect of opium being a heightened dream state, or lucid dreaming. Most likely ALICE is both a social commentary, and what it has endured as - a classic tale that delights children, and intrigues adults.
This weekend I went to a junior high school production of Alice In Wonderland. I was biased of course, because my niece stole the show as the Caterpillar, but I enjoyed the production immensely. Lewis Carroll's enduring classic tale of paranoia transcends the ages much the way Shakespeare does. We are bound to Time and Space, and Lewis doesn't let you forget it. Post Sixties, it's hard to remove the 'psychedelic' from Alice, that decade has changed Carroll's work forever. One cannot resist the urging from our subconscious to FEED YOUR HEAD, as Grace Slick suggested, and one shouldn't bother, because the shoe fits. ALICE is about discomfort, being out of place, and the inability to do anything about it. Sounds like an acid trip to me, but it has more to do, on it's surface, with the dream state. We've all had those dreams, running but not getting anywhere, asking questions that don't get answered, or at least to our satisfaction, which relate to paranoia. Opium use was rampant in Victorian England, so the question of drug references in ALICE date back to it's original composition. Was Lewis an opium smoker - we do not know for sure, but it seems highly likely, the effect of opium being a heightened dream state, or lucid dreaming. Most likely ALICE is both a social commentary, and what it has endured as - a classic tale that delights children, and intrigues adults.
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