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I was born the year that Star Wars saw its first theatrical release. At the time, I was a little young to appreciate any kind of cinema, but it makes a nice starting point.
I have clear memories of reading, as a very young child, a picture poetry book called 'Spaceman Spaceman' (which is probably still lurking somewhere in my parents' attic. And if not I may now have to order off Amazon.) I'm not convinced it was any kind of favourite of mine at the time, but it's firmly lodged in my memory, where so many other childhood books have faded. It was chock full of the neatly-rhymed, sweetly-illustrated adventures of astronauts, aliens and happy-looking rocket ships criss-crossing the galaxy from end to end. I remember in particular one picture of a helmeted spaceman upon his trusty rocket steed, winding their way between various brightly-ringed planets, with smiling green aliens waving them on, and a vapour trail tracing their path.
That was my picture of the universe. Astronauts weaving between planets as quickly and easily as I could wind between concrete posts on my bike in the park. How could it be any other way?
Then came John Craven's News Round, and a report on some probe that was making history: it would be the first man-made object to leave the solar system. TO LEAVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM. To this day, I still feel the echo of my heart plummeting down to earth. I couldn't believe that it could be true: that the only planets we had landed on, the only alien cultures we had encountered, were within our own solar system. How utterly boring and small. I felt cheated. (I still do.)
I don't honestly know whether for me, Star Wars came before or after that damning report. And it doesn't really matter. Myth is always more persuasive than truth. I don't know whether I was introduced to that world early enough to genuinely believe in a Universe full of Cantinas, lasers and aren't-you-a-little-short-for-a-stormtrooper's, or whether it was a slightly older, self-invoked, I-DO-believe-in-Santa-Claus-because-if-I-start-asking-where-the-presents-come-from-they-might-stop-coming sort of belief. Either way it was real enough for it all to exist, somewhere, deep down. And out there. Somewhere.
Intellectually, I can appreciate the momentous significance of the moon landings. Emotionally, they've always been the final nail in the coffin. Mankind had made it to... the moon. Great. That whole amazing, intriguing, adventure-filled Universe shrank to the size of a pinhole and collapsed under its own weight. The seven-year-old in my head dismissed this world as being far too small, dull and empty and turned her back on it forever. (I've tried to tempt her out since with the mysteries of quantum mechanics, but without heroes, villains, ray guns and sexually-ambiguous robots she's not interested. And I don't entirely blame her.)
When I finished Uni, I was a fully qualified Fine Artist. I had a piece of paper to say I could draw real good (or if not, that I could at least fake it in some significant manner.) ((I can draw real good, by the way.)) This meant I spent several years while I figured out what to do with that bit of paper working various jobs, on what to me was necessarily a very temporary basis, occasionally running away when they tried to make me Management. Less out of a fear of Management, and more because it was only ever meant to be temporary; it wasn't where I wanted to be, or what I wanted to be doing. Eventually I realised I'd never be happy unless I was doing something creative, and decided that the choices were either getting paid to draw, or going back into academia to do an Eng Lit MA. Someone paid me to draw and the rest is history.
I've now been doing this long enough to realise that 'Hell yes, they pay me to draw - I'm good at it.' Recently that's more and more likely to be 'They don't pay me enough to draw - I'm fucking good at it.' I believe this is known in some circles as having a career, rather than a job. I'm trying to think in those terms now. I'm making three-, five-, seven-year plans. (Nothing more than seven, as that would mean acknowledging that one day I may be over 40, which is patently ridiculous.) Big things are afoot. Or will be as soon as I get off my arse and actually update my CV. But even so, even now, it all has a bit of a temporary feel to it.
Because part of me is still holding out for that one job vacancy, the one that involves fighting against-all-odds wars, versus the evilest of empires, in that galaxy far, far away. Or at least a friendly alien or two...
I have clear memories of reading, as a very young child, a picture poetry book called 'Spaceman Spaceman' (which is probably still lurking somewhere in my parents' attic. And if not I may now have to order off Amazon.) I'm not convinced it was any kind of favourite of mine at the time, but it's firmly lodged in my memory, where so many other childhood books have faded. It was chock full of the neatly-rhymed, sweetly-illustrated adventures of astronauts, aliens and happy-looking rocket ships criss-crossing the galaxy from end to end. I remember in particular one picture of a helmeted spaceman upon his trusty rocket steed, winding their way between various brightly-ringed planets, with smiling green aliens waving them on, and a vapour trail tracing their path.
That was my picture of the universe. Astronauts weaving between planets as quickly and easily as I could wind between concrete posts on my bike in the park. How could it be any other way?
Then came John Craven's News Round, and a report on some probe that was making history: it would be the first man-made object to leave the solar system. TO LEAVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM. To this day, I still feel the echo of my heart plummeting down to earth. I couldn't believe that it could be true: that the only planets we had landed on, the only alien cultures we had encountered, were within our own solar system. How utterly boring and small. I felt cheated. (I still do.)
I don't honestly know whether for me, Star Wars came before or after that damning report. And it doesn't really matter. Myth is always more persuasive than truth. I don't know whether I was introduced to that world early enough to genuinely believe in a Universe full of Cantinas, lasers and aren't-you-a-little-short-for-a-stormtrooper's, or whether it was a slightly older, self-invoked, I-DO-believe-in-Santa-Claus-because-if-I-start-asking-where-the-presents-come-from-they-might-stop-coming sort of belief. Either way it was real enough for it all to exist, somewhere, deep down. And out there. Somewhere.
Intellectually, I can appreciate the momentous significance of the moon landings. Emotionally, they've always been the final nail in the coffin. Mankind had made it to... the moon. Great. That whole amazing, intriguing, adventure-filled Universe shrank to the size of a pinhole and collapsed under its own weight. The seven-year-old in my head dismissed this world as being far too small, dull and empty and turned her back on it forever. (I've tried to tempt her out since with the mysteries of quantum mechanics, but without heroes, villains, ray guns and sexually-ambiguous robots she's not interested. And I don't entirely blame her.)
When I finished Uni, I was a fully qualified Fine Artist. I had a piece of paper to say I could draw real good (or if not, that I could at least fake it in some significant manner.) ((I can draw real good, by the way.)) This meant I spent several years while I figured out what to do with that bit of paper working various jobs, on what to me was necessarily a very temporary basis, occasionally running away when they tried to make me Management. Less out of a fear of Management, and more because it was only ever meant to be temporary; it wasn't where I wanted to be, or what I wanted to be doing. Eventually I realised I'd never be happy unless I was doing something creative, and decided that the choices were either getting paid to draw, or going back into academia to do an Eng Lit MA. Someone paid me to draw and the rest is history.
I've now been doing this long enough to realise that 'Hell yes, they pay me to draw - I'm good at it.' Recently that's more and more likely to be 'They don't pay me enough to draw - I'm fucking good at it.' I believe this is known in some circles as having a career, rather than a job. I'm trying to think in those terms now. I'm making three-, five-, seven-year plans. (Nothing more than seven, as that would mean acknowledging that one day I may be over 40, which is patently ridiculous.) Big things are afoot. Or will be as soon as I get off my arse and actually update my CV. But even so, even now, it all has a bit of a temporary feel to it.
Because part of me is still holding out for that one job vacancy, the one that involves fighting against-all-odds wars, versus the evilest of empires, in that galaxy far, far away. Or at least a friendly alien or two...
