The Vintage Village and Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Yesterday, January 3, was the birthday of  J. R. R. Tolkien    He was a veteran of World War I and some say his stories were his therapy for that trauma.
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Yeah, I know what you’re thinkin’.  How does all that go together?

I’m a storyteller myself, although I won’t be talking about that on this blog.  Storytellers are driven to constantly research and wonder how things work, how one event sparks another, and how humans adapt and cope with it all.  That’s how we figure out stories.  But, as Tom Clancy once said,

 

“The difference between Reality and Fiction?  Fiction must make sense.”

In any case, I look around and I notice that modern living is making a lot of people crazy.  The noise, the chaos, the violence, the general bad manners and obscenities are crowding around us almost all the time.

 

Did you know the population of the United States has doubled since World War II?

We all develop ways to cope.  I prefer the small town life in which the community - the village - is all around you and the big, bad city is so far away it doesn’t even seem real.  Everyone knows everyone and you can trade for just about anything you need.  If someone’s house burns down, neighbors step right up and help the family find or build a new one.  Awesome.

That’s an ideal which is very hard to find these days.

Instead, I’ve noticed since moving to a heavily populated area near a big city that people create  micro-villages for themselves, usually centered on a shared religious belief or favorite activity.  This is good, of course, and the Retro, Vintage, Rockabilly lifestyle seems to be a part of that.  So far, I’ve encountered a lot of really nice, super imaginative, unbeatably optimistic people in it.

As an example, here is Cherry Dollface’s New Year 2015 Message of Lady Love and Positivity

And sometimes people lose touch with reality completely online.  This brought an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine "It's Only a Paper Moon" to mind.  Nog loses a leg in the Dominion War.  He’s physically healed, but still suffering emotional trauma.  He decides to spend time in a holographic recreation of 1962 Las Vegas as part of his therapy, but then doesn’t want to leave.  It’s a heart-wrenching episode and one of my favorites.

So, modern living gets on our nerves and we want to protect ourselves and our families from it.  Good.  But, it brings to mind a truth brought out in the movie  The Village  by M. Night Shyamalan.  As the grieving father, August Nicholson, states, “You know, like a dog can smell you.  You may run from sorrow, as we have.  Sorrow will find you.  It can smell you.”  In this story, a group of people create a village to shut themselves away from the world’s monsters.  As good as these people are, they cannot completely shut out one monster – the human potential for evil.

 

This is why I say build your village; make it vintage if you like.  At the same time, remember the morals of all the great stories and stay aware that evil lurks in every heart. 

"Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay... small acts of kindness and love." -Gandalf, from The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey

 

By the way, the new Hobbit movie is the most popular movie in the world right now and in theaters, thank you Mr. Tolkien.   The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies