Sunday, September 24, 2017

[Article] Caught Somewhere In Time

    There's a very limited number of artists from my middle school days that I'm still a proud fan of. But no artist has meant as much to me for as long as Iron Maiden has, whom I first fell in love with at the age of 11 when I would listen to Powerslave after school every day and flip through its lyric booklet completely absorbed. Who the hell were these guys, with long, straight hair and way-too-tight, leather pants, singing about sword-fighting and ancient Egypt? I've long since wanted to write a piece on them but figured that question and most others had already been answered - what else could possibly be said about them that hasn't already been said at great lengths? It was during my latest Maiden binge, which happened to coincide with the recent finale of Twin Peaks, that an idea worth writing about finally came to me.




    Twin Peaks is David Lynch's brilliant television mystery drama, originally airing from 1990-91 and recently rebooted for a third season. Ostensibly, it deals with FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper's investigation into the murder of prom queen Laura Palmer in the small, sleepy town of Twin Peaks, WA. But, more than that, it addresses the underlying, omnipresent evil in every day life, especially in that which may appear quaint and idyllic on the surface. Lynch does so by constantly interweaving dreams and reality, past and future, forcing the viewer to question every detail of every scene as they attempt to solve the same puzzle that so consumes the protagonist. Although the series was often romantic, humorous, and optimistic, it left us with a rather dark and hopeless denouement. One of the main themes in the series finale - which ties in perfectly with that of my favorite Iron Maiden album - is the horror of losing one's sense of self by travelling through time.


    In the finale, Dale Cooper has one last opportunity to save Laura, who we learn is the human representation of goodness and purity. He does this initially by travelling back in time to the night of her murder and preventing it; we get to see a Twin Peaks where she lived on, a Twin Peaks where everything didn't unravel into despair. But Judy (or Jao De), who is the source of all that's evil and corrupt in the world, takes Laura out of this reality and places her in another, where she is isolated and has completely lost her sense of self; she is fully convinced she is another person. Cooper, despite Judy's best efforts, manages to find her in this other timeline. But he is clearly not the Cooper beloved by audiences, he is discernibly different in both speech and disposition. His spirit has already started to wither away in his pursuit of Laura. Nevertheless, he convinces her to visit her real mother, Sarah Palmer, in the hopes that it will refresh her memory and remind her of her true identity as the only person capable of vanquishing Judy.




    However, when the two reach her mother's house, they are met by an entirely unknown woman, who claims to have never heard of Sarah Palmer. Cooper, returning to the street in a horrible moment of clarity, realizes he is in one of Judy's alternate timelines and chillingly asks: 'what year is it?'. He seems doomed to repeat this same fate over and over, endlessly chasing Laura through different realities only to realize each time that Judy is one step ahead of him. After hearing Cooper's question, Laura seems to have a moment of clarity herself - she begins to scream in horror as she suddenly remembers her murder and all of Judy's evil she had repressed in this new timeline. We are left feeling quite empty, wondering if Cooper will ever be able to save her, or if he will continue on in vain until he eventually loses all sense of self and forgets what his purpose was in the first place.


    This utter terror and hopelessness of being completely at the mercy of time, of losing yourself within its twists and turns, was explored 31 years prior by Maiden's Somewhere In Time record. This album was really the product of exhaustion - the group had just played 189 shows on the World Slavery tour, and for the first time in their career they decided to take some time off. As their sixth studio album, it was the first one not to be released the year after the previous. In having the time to reflect and experiment for once, Maiden took chances with their sound and subject matter unlike any before. The entire album is soaked in this sort of world-weary melancholy - even the most uptempo and marketable songs are more introspective than their prior catalog. Heaven Can Wait and Wasted Years, for example, the only two songs off the album that the band has continued to include in set lists, are anything but the confident, assertive Maiden we were used to. 




    Thus, we can view Somewhere In Time as the transition point between the aggressive and visceral Maiden of the early 80s, and the more pensive, progressive Maiden of the late 80s onward. It is the first time they used synthesizers in their music. But, unlike their followup effort, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, they restricted themselves to guitar synthesizers. Lyrically, it was the first album where they truly showed vulnerability, something not exactly encouraged in the genre, at least at the time. Bruce was also arguably at his most sincere and emotive as a singer.

    Somewhere In Time is (very loosely) a concept album, built around the theme of time. Caught Somewhere In Time addresses time travel, Wasted Years the pain of lost time, Sea of Madness going crazy because of it, Heaven Can Wait and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner the notion of eternity, Stranger In A Strange Land being frozen in time, Alexander the Great immortality (at least in terms of reputation), and Déjà Vu the fractured perception of time. Consequently, it was their most unified album to date - even though they were dealing so heavily with the abstract, whereas previous albums focused almost entirely on the concrete. It should also be mentioned that the album contains some of the greatest cover art of all-time, with dozens of intricacies and references to their past work. In fact, Wikipedia has a whole section devoted to it.




    The album's mesmerizing opening track, Caught Somewhere In Time, is perhaps the best song on the album and forms the strongest connection to the finale of Twin Peaks. Its hook is the source of inspiration for this article - the absolute horror and desperation Bruce expresses at being trapped in time instantly evoked memories of Cooper's own conundrum. In the first verse, he sings 'If you have the time to lose / An open mind and time to choose', and then in the second verse, 'If I said, I'd take you there / Would you go, would you be scared?'. This is Cooper trying to convince Laura of who she is and get her to visit her real mother. The pre-chorus repeated throughout the song, 'Time is always on my side', is Judy reminding us, and Cooper, that time is the ultimate ally to someone who can manipulate it, and, therefore, he can never win. That sort of power can be wielded to solve any problem, such as stashing Laura in different dimensions to keep her from Cooper. Bruce is facing the hopelessness of trying to fight against time, a natural and inevitable force, just like Cooper is. The fourth verse has Judy 'like a wolf in sheeps' clothing', which refers to Sarah Palmer, whom Judy possessed in order to get closer to Laura. Thus, Cooper's quest does seem hopeless, since even if he succeeds in reuniting Laura with her mother, he's really just delivering her right to Judy. In the final verse, Judy confronts Cooper directly: 'You've only got your soul to lose / Eternally let yourself go'. This is Cooper's dilemma - eternally try to save Laura, most likely failing and losing his identity in the process of travelling in and out of different timelines, or surrender and let the world succumb to Judy's evil.


    The rest of the album draws strong parallels to the Twin Peaks finale as well. In Stranger In A Strange Land, which aptly describes Laura in her alternate reality, Bruce sings: 'My spirit wanders endlessly / Until the day will dawn and friends from home discover why / Hear me calling, rescue me'. This is Laura reaching out to Cooper, the only person who is capable of saving her. Cooper heeds these calls and changes the past by preventing her death, demonstrating the fourth song Heaven Can Wait, where Judy reminds Laura and Cooper of the futility of their actions: 'Eternal youth, I'll take you to the other side / To see the truth, the path for you is decided'. Déjà Vu is Laura's mental state while returning home with Cooper: 'When you see familiar faces / But you don't remember where they're from / Could you be wrong?'. Sea of Madness illustrates Laura's horror when she is finally flooded with the memories: 'Out in the street somebody's crying'. 




    If Laura is the Stranger, then Cooper is the Long Distance Runner, as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner uses running as a metaphor for being lost in time, and the exhausting and disorienting nature of repeating the same events over and over: 'But the miles, they never seem to end / As if you're in a dream, not getting anywhere / It seems so futile'. Cooper can move through time but finds himself unable to truly change it. The song Wasted Years depicts the consequences Cooper suffers: 'I'm travellin' on / Far and wide / But now it seems / I'm just a stranger to myself / And all the things I sometimes do / It isn't me but someone else'. He finds himself slipping away further and further as he travels through different realities in pursuit of Laura, forever struggling against Judy's machinations. 


    This is the recurring theme in both Somewhere In Time and the Twin Peaks finale - one cannot hope to maintain their sense of self and their true identity when time is distorted. Peoples' identities are tied inextricably to the time and space in which they live, so to alter either of these things is to alter one's identity as well, until eventually there is no identity. Lynch's view of this matter, however, seems to be a little more pessimistic than Iron Maiden's, as the album's finale, Alexander the Great - who 'became a legend amongst mortal men' - reminds us that even if we ourselves do not know who we are, we're never truly erased from time because we are able to live on in the memories of others.