insane

I own a 1984 Japanese Release LaserDisc copy of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope that I have no means of playing. I picked it up because I know it to be an unadulterated copy of the film as I first experienced it back around the time I was five years old–which was in 1988 mostly (just under a month of 1987). This version of the film is sacred to me and I find it comforting to know it is in my possession. Full disclosure, I own the same cut (US Release) of the film on VHS and have no immediate means of playing it either.

There is some key to my inner clockwork hidden in plain sight among my collecting habits. There are books, games, films, records, playlists, tapes, handwritten thoughts on withering paper (all very neatly organized of course) in my possession that I may never again choose to engage directly. Yet I find the knowledge of their physical presence in my life comforting…perhaps even entwined in the capacity to be mentally at peace.

It’s as if I’m curating a neatly packaged hoarder’s museum of my own mind and how it came to be here and now. Though I have all the exhibits memorized, I make sure they are dusted and ready just in case someone who wanders through might become interested.

There is a ‘plan’ of course, a Luddite‘s list of baroque machinery to acquire and time to allocate so that I might exit the loop of possession and awareness with the ability to fully engage. In this particular fantastic scenario, I purchase a working LaserDisc player and add it to the growing tower of consoles in my already dangerously cluttered visual media corner.

If and when this mildly absurd dream enacts, Episode IV will be the first disc I load in. It has been decades now since I’ve seen the non-special edition, which remains more special to me than the vast majority of motion pictures appearing in the 32 (or maybe 33) years since it first appeared in my life.

Given proximity to Marin it may be ill advised to publish this information at all. Will Disney and Lucasfilm agents slink up Howell Mountain by night to repossess the disc lest a cut where Han fires first be running rampant and wild through the hills of Napa county? Time will tell.

*I keep the posts on /mindwanders intentionally frivolous. That said, I am disgusted with the state more than normal this week, if you’re looking for a dose of that rage, my daily insanity journal exists too.*