by Leonardo Casas
How ideal and attractive it is living under the everlasting evocation of what gives you joy.
As a child Television was everything to me. No restrictions in my household for it. I received the pleasures of the electronic images since day one.
What gave me joy then is still able to give me strength now. Distant dreams.
The Brady Bunch was one those dreams and they were so distant. In time and space, the fictional family of a new society were years far from my own reality, but the way they looked, so enigmatic and wild, was what bred my time travel skills. They were for sure, one of those unique electronic experiences beyond the limits of everyday constrictions and exquisitely elusive attractions on Chilean Tv channels…
It was through the Filmation cartoons on Saturday mornings where I had the chance for a more solid re-encounter with the mysterious wide blue-eyed American family… Marcia, Jan, Cindy, Peter, Bob and Greg: Can you imagine what an exotic and psychedelic experience it was to watch a TV explosion where the six transmuted from real life brothers and sisters into cartoons characters? There were pandas and dog and even a magic bird!!! – the cartoons were okay but my need for the Brady knowledge was still intact: who were their parents? Were they responsible for the sexual tension I scarcely perceived? What about Alice? Was she Mr. Brady’ secret lover? What about all those kids? Was the older sister really groovier than Jan? What about the boys? So many unanswered questions… so many expectations clouded by an unfortunate context’s elision.
As the time passed and I got older Nietzsche replaced Babes in Toyland, Russian Avant-garde cinema overcame the Goonies and the news was a better lie than Laverne and Shirley.
I started teaching in an Institute about 2002 in a very rough neighborhood, full of Chinese shops and lots of Palestinian thrift stores selling the most unpredictable items ever: old peewee Herman dolls through Boxcar Willie cassette tapes; 80s jeans jackets through nylon ladies shorts: the turning point on my thirst for the unknown exploded and Russian avant-garde movies were left behind for unsigned wedding video cassettes; photo albums featuring Baptist families become even more significant than the news.
And then a miracle: Growing Up Brady: Barry “Greg” Williamson’s autobiography collided in my path: a small volume sliced in three sections (one page missing) with all the information, chapter lists and pictures my poor Chilean soul always imagined to read. Sorry Mr. Nietzsche but the knowledge is in the Now. Page after page I was transported to a completely unexpected era. A new vocabulary of healthy fantasy and lusty illusion irradiated from this new book of revelation. Not long after this meeting with the written past I dreamed about as a kid in so many states of delirium, the cable channel Cinecanal Classics started airing all the Brady Bunch Seasons. All the stories Greg told me where there! All the promises of a synthetic and colorful realm were fulfilled. Carol and Mike were even sexier than I ever imagined. Alice was whiter than anyone. Marcia and Jan the living models for Malibu Barbie, with the same Egyptian elegance of the tanned dolls. The boys were the boys, they had in their shared room the same clown painting I still hang as a shadow on my wall.
How amazing the illusion that plays games on us! How colorful the distant dreams can become!
In the eternal circle of the eternal ice that each individual can take care of, against any odds, amazing things can happen.
“So as you can see, we all turned out fine, and there’s not a bad banana in the Bunch.”
Barry Williamson
www.warsemenandgrooviness.com
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